Templars and Daemons
by RegisSantia
Summary: Inhumanity is their basic practice, pain and death the fuel of their culture. They are the Templars, and societies die in their pitiless gaze. Fortunately they lived in an alterntive universe, until now.
1. Genesis

**Author's Note:** A story of otherworldly Temples, vast callous cults, souls, minds, and the bodies they inhabit. I make it sound so pompous, please read this first chapter, and tell me if you like it, the other chapters are slightly longer.

Vielen Danken

Your Host

_RegisSantia_

**Disclaimer: **All previous disclaimers written by me still stand, and will continue to stand until I say that they don't. (This saves me from having to write disclaimers, crafty eh?)

**Genesis  
**

The Temple stands on an empty plain. The structure is vast and the architecture gothic. Envision it, a flying buttress soars to a roof. Upon which a stone tower nestles, dark and foreboding. At the apex of the tower an arch splits from the masonry and sweeps skywards, at its highest point it sinks into the ornate stonework of tower in the same structure. But this tower, though above the lower black clouds and almost a mile across is but one end of a bridge, a bridge that leads away into the gloom. Follow it, at the end of the bridge is the central temple, the nucleus of the epic building that sprawls to the size of a small town. By pass the domes and towers and slit windows. Move along the impossibly thin walkway of the bridge into the portal at its end. A Dread Gate that proclaims without words that once you go in, you can't come out. Pass the portal, skim through the endless labyrinth of corridors; pass where the gangs of slaves once toiled and the doom-shrouded acolytes stalked among them. Pass the altars where priests offered up sacrifices to ever-hungry entities, pass the great chambers and halls. Turn the last turns and come to the second Doom Portal. This door is inscribed, covered completely in an archaic script which will never be deciphered, The stone into which the door is set is carved into nightmarish forms, grasping clawed hands, fanged hungry mouths. They seem to writhe on the surface of the wall. Pass the door and enter the open space of a hall of unrivalled proportions. The floor of the hall is marked with ruts some metres deep, and stained red, others more finely crafted than the deep drainage gullies, they form an intricate pattern, and are inlaid with jet and, closer to the centre of the room, with ruby. At the very centre are nine chairs, high backed and fashioned from stone. These chairs once held people.

The council of the Masters was in session. Five men and four women sat in the great stone chairs in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple. They were all hooded and cloaked to the point of being invisible in the low light. They all sat almost motionless, speaking in turn.

"Lordship we,

Art all assembled.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"Blessed art,

Those who now serve thee.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"Devoted art,

Thy faithful servants.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"Let us rise,

That we may look down.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"All ruling,

Thy standard shalt be.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"Lordship thou,

Art now almighty.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"We art now,

Ready to serve thee.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"Lordship thou,

Hast souls and bodies.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

"Though in life,

My word is judgement.

Send thy word,

And it shall be done."

With the final intonation from the Grandmaster in the centre of the semicircle of chairs the poetic ritual ended, and discussion began.

"Grandmaster I beg to speak," announced a robed figure, rising from its chair and moving to the centre of the semicircle.

"Speak then, and thou shalt be heard," recited the Grandmaster, in his quiet, civilized voice.

"Our lord is victorious in his vanquishing of the pacifist scum who held his daughter."

"Excellent," said the grand Master, placing his gloved fingers together. "And what of the daughter herself?"

"Lordship, it appears that she was taken away."

"Most unfortunate," replied the Grandmaster, before asking, "Where does she reside now."

"She is living in a realm which we are unable to reach without serious sorcerous application. Application that would use up almost every slave in the Temple to move anything substantial. I believe that it would be beneficial to send an Emissary to bind the daughter and then move our entire church into the realm, which is teeming with life ripe for the harvest."

"Your suggestion has been noted," said the Grandmaster, motioning to the speaker to sit. "What is the name of this realm?"

It was not a normal day in Titan's Tower. Cyborg was thrashing Beast Boy at the latest video game, Starfire was cooking inedible Tamaranian delicacies, Robin was training, and Raven was, Raven was hovering around taking an interest in what other people were doing, it was quite unnatural.

Cyborg noticed this after being asked to explain the background story of the game at which he was consistently demolished all of Beast Boys attempts to beat him. "Well y'see it's kind of complicated," he began, feeling slightly awkward.

"Go on," said Raven obligingly.

That was wrong, Raven didn't oblige, she stuck to her guns rigidly and conservatively. Besides, she thought that only idiots could possibly have any interest in the doltish pastime of video gaming, and she didn't mind saying so. "Anyway, yeah," Cyborg went on scratching the back of his head and looking around, "like I said its complicated, the hero guy's father was killed by the demon guy ten years ago…" Man this was weird, the plot had sounded perfectly sensible before he'd started explaining it out loud to Raven. Thank god he wasn't playing one of the stupid beat 'em up games with the moronic plotlines and the even more moronic characters. "… So now he has to go kill the bandits because the guy at the inn paid him to do it, and then…" Raven was worrying him; she shouldn't be taking an interest, she should be doing Raven things like meditating, and reading, and being grumpy.

His thoughts, and his explanation of the journey undertaken by the hero of the game, were interrupted by Beast Boy's victorious cry, "Oh yeah! And victory goes to the vice champion. Go Beast Boy, go Beast Boy."

"Yeah you wish, we're having a re-match, Raven distracted me."

"How? Is there something distracting about Raven?" asked Beast Boy with a sly expression on his face.

"You shut up man, its you that gets distracted by Raven, not me, anyway, its not everyday Raven asks a question about video games without being sarcastic," Cyborg replied quickly.

Beast Boy frowned, "Dude, that's totally weird, no that's unnatural, no that's just plain freak-"

"Aw come on man, make up your mind."

Beast Boy jumped up, "This is it!"

"Is what?" asked Cyborg.

"This is my chance," replied Beast Boy, which was not enlightening.

"I don't think she's going to accept if you propose BB," said Cyborg with a smirk, earning him a scowl from the changeling who was standing in front of him.

"Whom is Beast Boy proposing to?" came a frigidly polite voice from the doorway as Raven strode in after looking to see how Robin was doing with his punch bag and weights.

"Raven," said Beast Boy, and then stopped abruptly with his mouth hanging open stupidly. Cyborg snickered. Raven, instead of raising an eyebrow, sneering and replying sarcastically tottered on her feet. She fell backwards fainting onto the floor. Her head thudded painfully causing Cyborg and Beast Boy to wince. At that moment Starfire walked in bearing a large tray piled high with Boredom Banishment Pudding, the way in which it banished boredom was thankfully unknown. Her purple booted foot caught on Raven's unconscious figure and she toppled forwards with an enhanced Tamaranian shriek. The tray supporting the questionable pudding hurtled from her hands and the dish squatting on top of it splattered a large area consisting of floor, couch, Cyborg and Beast Boy. Robin rushed into the sweat plastering his hair to his head and his clothes to his body, "Who screamed?" he demanded before tripping himself over Raven and Starfire, who didn't seem too sorry about him landing on top of her.


	2. Advance

**Author's Note: **My thanks go to Lennox RH, along with this small message. Do I know your name from "A New Age"? As you asked I have continued, the story is still under construction. I'll put up a chapter for every review I get until the reviews come in faster than I can write the chapters. Do the Titans sound strange, I;'m not sure that their speech is totally seamless. Anyway, enough dithering, I hope you find this chapter to your liking.

**Advance**

The Grandmaster stalked along the corridors, past where the gangs of slaves toiled and the doom-shrouded Acolytes stalked among them, past the altars where priests offered up sacrifices to ever-hungry entities, past the great chambers and halls. He came at last to a small and rather nondescript door at the end of a corridor. He opened it door and stepped into the room.

A young woman in dark robes without a hood stood in the centre with her arms clasped behind her back. Her face bore an expression of militaristic competence that was at odds with the indulgent ritualistic excess of the other figures in the temple. The Grandmaster found her frankness and ability pleasing. She was blunt where everyone else wouldn't begin to talk without intoning the Wish to Speak. She acted where others dithered, suggested, or consulted their superior. She acted in the same way in fact, which had allowed him to become Grandmaster, by having ability and recognising it in others. She would make a fine successor, with a little field experience.

"You know what we wish you to do," he stated.

"Yes," her answer was as much a statement as his.

The Grandmaster decided to test her, "It is written in the Dogma that one should address one's superior's by title."

"It is indeed. However, on the occasions which my superiors for disobeying this rule have referred me to you I have been promoted. One cannot forbid something then encourage it," she hadn't even bothered to add a "with all due respect," he knew she respected him, and she knew he knew.

"I think our understanding of each other is all together too good," he said softly.

"I agree, however, that is not the topic which we are here to discuss," yes she kept him true to his principles all right.

"Very well, we shall be strictly to the point, you are to go to retrieve his lordship's daughter. She will be under the influence of her foolish and unenlightened teachers and friends. You must break their influence. Transportation will require the expending of many slaves, however, that isn't the topic under discussion. You will be in a metal device not much bigger than your body; your life will be preserved by your ability to fall into a stasis state brought on by meditation. The journey will take a week but you will have to survive on enough air to last an hour," he paused for a second.

"I am aware of this."

He smiled; she was exactly the right person for the job in hand. Highly efficient, ruthless, and devoted to ideals not words. "You are, and I see that the continuation of this meeting is fruitless. May His Lordship be with you."

"And with you also," she said completing a rite so old that it had ceased to be a ceremony and had become a practice. They both bowed and walked out of the door, parting at the end of the corridor.

The Emissary moved swiftly along winding passages and stone walkways. She came to a small black stone courtyard. Very slightly offset from the centre was a large metal globe was split in half, technomancers were hovering around it, making checks with their unearthly instruments, laying sheets of metal on the surface of the sphere and running devices over them which seemed to melt the metal into the layer underneath it. On the opposite side of the courtyard slaves were being lined up. Some looked afraid, with a wide-eyed horrified paralysing fear. Others she was annoyed to see, looked happy, they probably didn't know their inferior lives were about to be abruptly ended to power her craft to its destination. It didn't occur to her that this might be viewed as a cause for celebration by the labour pool of the Temple. Some of the slaves simply looked confused. She realised that she had been taking an interest in how slaves looked. That was stupid, they were inferior beings, they had no purpose save to serve the Templars in whatever way was seen fit.

A Technomancer scurried up to her. "The pod is ready."

"Pod?" said the Emissary, who had never heard the word before.

"Capsule, module, container," explained the Technomancer irritably. The Emissary couldn't stand technomancers. They were no better than slaves yet they were necessary because they made sure that the physical engines sometimes required by the Templars worked. How she hated their arrogance.

"The pod is ready," he repeated with a nauseating false smile.

"Right," she replied, this one was particularly arrogant.

"If you would like to get in then," he said as if talking to an infant.

That was enough; she reached out an arm and grabbed the Technomancer's face, it was high time someone taught the stuck up fools some respect. She lifted him up, her hand clamped onto his lower jaw; she brought his face up to her snarling visage. His eyes were full of fear. She smiled cruelly, and he wept in terror. They spent a few more seconds in contact before she hurled him away, his mind was blown and his body was a useless hulk. Her head flicked around to the petrified technomancers who had been watching, they got back to work immediately. Good, she'd taught them some respect.

By the end of the hour she was hurtling in meditative stasis through airless expanses inside a metal globe before the ritual which required the lives of so many slaves sent her blasting into the realm where His Lordship's daughter was being held.

Titan's tower was unusually quiet. Raven was still unconscious, and Robin and Starfire had gone off to have a "little talk" while Cyborg and Beast Boy had been left to watch over her unwaking figure laid under a spare duvet on the couch.

"She took it a bit seriously, I wasn't actually like, going to propose to her," said Beast Boy, who was a little confused.

"She was acting weird, it was probably nothing to do with you," Cyborg snapped, annoyed at the interruption into his thought's.

"OK OK, don't bite my head off dude," said Beast Boy, settling down to sulk.

The sky grew dark as Beast Boy played the Gamestation on mute, and Cyborg searched through his memories trying to find some explanation for all of the events of the past few hours, although minor and domestic, they worried him a lot more than any plot formed by a villain, the most annoying part was that he had absolutely no idea why.

The wailing of the tower alarm broke into his thoughts.

Robin rushed into the room followed closely by Starfire, as Beast Boy brought up the projected map of Jump City. A large red light was pulsing in a district composed of apartment blocks. The text beside the light read,

-Unidentified object

Honeysuckle Park

Request for support from J.C.P.D.-

"Titan's g-"

"Erm, Robin?" interrupted Cyborg.

"What?" the leader demanded, his head whipping round to face towards Cyborg.

"Raven," Cyborg said flatly.

"Oh," said Robin, a little awkwardly, before shouting, "Beast Boy, stay with her."

"What! Why me?" exclaimed Beast Boy, a bit too late considering that everyone else had left the building. He sat down by Raven muttering, and turned on the Gamestation. It wasn't long before he was totally engrossed.

Police Commissioner Grahamson watched the T car approach with a less than pleased expression. Why had he been promoted to be commissioner of a city were the majority of law enforcement was carried out by a group of five bloody teenagers, and the majority of crime was committed by psychopaths bent on the destruction of the country? It was just his luck. He had always been an ambitious man, with a firm belief in the duty and power of the state. So why was it him, why was it him who had to endure the humiliation of telling an angry populace that the region's largest police force waiting for information from a bunch of children. It was bloody unfair. So he was not best pleased to see the T car speed towards the blockades set up surrounding the destruction zone created by the impact of the UFO and the fires started by the heat of re-entry, or was it just entry with UFOs?

Robin stepped out of the car and walked straight up to him. Robin was the most annoying of the lot, at least all of the other stuck-up brats had something that set them apart, but Robin didn't, Robin was just an ordinary person, of the papers could call him the Boy Wonder and praise him to the stars but he was just an annoying kid, an arrogant annoying kid.

"Where do you need our expertise?" asked Robin walking up to Grahamson and shaking his hand. He was always so bloody condescending too.

"I assure you we can handle this fine, my new secretary called you out when there was no need, sorry to bother you but there's really no trouble," said Grahamson, through gritted teeth, his false smile half hidden under his moustache.

"Well we'll just stick around and see how things unfold then," said Robin with a smile that turned Grahamson's stomach, not because it was fake, but because it was so very much the opposite. Was there no getting rid of him?

"Fine," Grahamson grunted and moved away as the other titans piled out of the car.

All attention was focused on the object; it seemed to be a perfect sphere of metal. So far it had resisted all attempts at scanning, opening, or probing. It was therefore, an enigma. Robin stared at it, and it moved! No, that was just a trick of the light, how disappointing.

After a few minutes elongated by impatience, it split in half in a maelstrom of compressed white gas, dust, and noise in the manner of strange artificial things which fall from the sky everywhere.

When the choking clouds dispersed engineers and other technical personnel rushed forwards to the empty sphere. They observed the minute pumps which had filled the air around the capsule with unnatural mist, and that was all they saw which qualified the sphere as a mechanical device. It seemed that it had been completely empty.

Back in the tower Raven jerked into a sitting position, causing Beast Boy to flinch backwards in shock. The empath girl's eyelids retracted for a second, revealing out of focus eyes, but they closed again quickly and her body relaxed back onto the couch.

Beast Boy sat back down carefully, as Robin called him on his communicator.

"There was no trouble, it just kind of, broke apart, and there was nothing inside, or if there was it got away in the smokescreen," said Robin, obviously disappointed. "We're going to get food on the way back."

Beast Boy acknowledged this and settled back to his video games, sweet dreams, he thought, glancing at Raven.

Raven was not having sweet dreams. She felt the opening of the capsule, and the thing within rising from stasis, the superlative meditative state. And she fell into troubled dreams.

She opened her eyes and looked around, and saw the familiar rock path over the black void. She moved purposefully along it, until Hatred stepped in front of her.

"Good morning," said Raven stepping to her right. Hatred moved left to block her way. "What do you want?" demanded Raven in her deadpan voice.

"Oh I don't want anything," replied Hatred with an infuriating smirk, "but she does." She pointed forwards with a gleeful snigger and Raven about-faced to see a darkness-shrouded figure reaching out towards her, hands grasping at her on the ends of long trails of blackness. Raven stepped backwards into Hatred, who promptly pushed her forwards into the ebony embrace of the thing that was clutching onto her.

The last thing she saw before her sight left her was Hatred waving mockingly and laughing manically.

Raven's eyes snapped open, there was sweat running down her face and she was breathing quickly. Her heart was hammering frantically in her chest and resisting her attempts to calm it.

She closed her eyes and chanted softly until calmness returned, then she reopened them.

"Hey Rae, you're up," exclaimed Beast Boy, dumping his weight on the seat and digging in to a plate of tofu.

"Well observed," muttered Raven, before walking into a corner of the room to meditate.

Her dreams, she knew, could be prescient; this was especially likely if they took place on the landscape of her mind. So if the dream was prescient, what did it mean? What did the dark individual stand for? Why did she pull her away from her mind? The multitude of questions that needed answering to make the dream clear would only be answered by knowledge of the future, knowledge that prescient dreams did not give. There was no point in worrying about it now; the only way of resolving the matter was to look for answers to the questions when the events in question took place. Raven continued to meditate until the loud arrival of the rest of the team.

"Kindly keep surplus noise to a minimum, I have to meditate," she snapped.

"Raven!" exclaimed Robin, "You're awake!"

"Bonus points for observation," said Raven dryly.

"Please, what are bonus points?" piped up Starfire, prompting an explanation from Robin. "Fascinating," Starfire said appreciatively when he had finished.

Robin blushed slightly, "Well its not actually that-" He was cut off.

"Raven, seeing as you're awake now why don't you tell us what happened back there?" suggested Cyborg.

"What, pray, are you referring to?" inquired Raven coldly; her tone stating quite definitely that the subject should not be pursued.

"Hello! You fainted, that isn't a typical bored Raven reaction," said Beast Boy, waving his arms.

Raven glared daggers at him, "I can't explain it to a non-empath without employing obtuse metaphors."

"Fine by me," answered Cyborg with a shrug.

"No," said Raven, and she was adamant for the rest of an otherwise uneventful afternoon.


	3. Circles and Fire

**Author's Note: **Two reviews, in such little time, how flattering. To evilsangle I say, firstly, my thanks for your review. Secondly that the only pairings I will put in the story are suggested, I am sure that I am unable to write romance

To Lennox RH: from time to time OC's will walk on and off just to give the story a bit of colour, the Commisioner is (at least so far) one of them, I'm afraid their appearence is largely up to you to create. In ths chapter you get to know a bit more about the Grandmaster (you lucky person!) and see a bit more of the workings of the Temple. The plot proper takes a little longer to begin.

**Circles and Fire**

The Grandmaster grew frustrated, he couldn't stand ignorance. Ignorance in others was bad; it interrupted the flow of information, and prevented the growth of understanding. Ignorance in others was contagious, if one was convinced his knowledge was false, others were sure to follow, like idiotic sheep. It disgusted him. Those around him being ignorant was bad enough, but to be ignorant himself was unbearable, it could cause him to come to a disadvantageous decision, come to an incorrect conclusion or do the one thing he held to be hateful above all else, make a mistake.

That was why he had joined the Temple, to enhance his knowledge, to become better, greater, to strive boldly on the long road to perfection. Perfection, the ultimate state which he craved at all times. Perfection, that he would achieve, no matter what it took, he would become perfect. At long last he would no longer have to deal with the idiocy and incompetence of others. At last he would be free from dependence on anything. No other would ever match him; he would be forever greater, forever incomparable, once he was perfect. He would be perfect, but now he was ignorant. He could not communicate with the Emissary, and so he was ignorant of the situation on, Earth. Earth, or so he had been informed, was but one mass in a realm of unimaginable amounts of masses, it irked him that the number of masses was to great to contemplate, he should be able to contemplate anything and everything.

Fortunately the technomancers had discovered a method of communication, it used up disproportionate amounts of slaves, but here were plenty of the inferiors around to be used.

He stared into the mirror that the technomancers had mounted on his wall 1 hour 23 minutes ago. It ceased to reflect after a few minutes and he saw a Technomancer standing "inside" it.

"Grandmaster, the rite we are about to perform is-"

"Am I aware of the functions of the ceremony, it was quite fully explained to me," snapped the Grandmaster. "Just get on."

The Technomancer bowed his acknowledgement. He signalled to his subordinates to begin. The subaltern began to walk slowly in front of the arrayed slaves swinging a brazier filled with deadly incense. Else where in the lines of condemned three other technomancers were doing the same. They paced solemnly across the room and back leaving clouds of incense in their wake.

The Technomancer Overseer was in agonies of guilt; the majority of slaves came from the culture he had been raised by, a culture which the Temple had destroyed, along with countless others. Those with training in technomancy were spared while the others were put to work as Temple slaves, and usually slaughtered to power the devices created by technomancers like him. A tear crept from his eye; life in the Temple hardened you against anything that didn't safeguard your own life, guilt, or any other feeling save cruelty, counted among these.

He would have time to hate himself later, right now he needed to get out of the room, before the incense killed him as well as his former countrymen.

The Grandmaster looked into his mirror, or screen as it had become, at the slaves, some of whom were beginning to writhe in the agony which the poisoned incense inflicted upon their insides. Soon many of them were keeling over and lying dead on the floor. He had been informed that the spell required to transport the Temple into the same world as this Earth, known as The Ultimate Solution, would require the incensing of every slave on Temple land. To someone not so fully indoctrinated as the Grandmaster the spell would have been unthinkable, but to him it was merely unusual in the amounts of energy required, and nothing more.

As the life of the last slave left its body the scene in the mirror changed. The Grandmaster was no longer looking into a chamber filled with the bodies of slaves, but out of the eyes of the Emissary. She appeared to be inside a dingy run down room, he took in its contents with distaste.

He spoke into the mirror, into the Emissary's mind, "Report."

She spoke tentatively, "Would you enlighten me as to how exactly I am to report lord."

He did so swiftly.

"So as I ordered, report," he finished.

"As you command," she began.

The Emissary spoke swiftly, she described to the Grandmaster her landing and her acquisition of lodgings, ("Lord the impudence of the populous is amazing, they don't seem to realise that they are inferiors. I taught respect to those who refused me accommodation,") then went on to inform him of her plans regarding the daughter of His Lordship. The Grandmaster heard it and approved. Then the link between them was broken.

Her plan was by no means perfect, information on the daughter of His Lordship had been sparse at the Temple, almost all save her age, gender, and most obvious abilities was hidden, curse Azar and the pacifist scum!

The solution to the problem of being unaware of the name or description of her quarry could be solved in one way, there was a chance that her soul would be devoured, but that possibility was present in almost any ritual.

She selected a large stick of charcoal from a pouch somewhere in the folds of her robe and began purposefully marking the floor with it. She drew the summoning circle familiar to all those with any experience of such of things, moving the charcoal across the floor with smooth expert motions, summoning was the first thing a Temple Acolyte learnt, and was universally mastered.

She completed the circle and stepped back, admiring her handiwork, until she snapped out of it and got on with the task in hand.

She chanted quietly, her voice blank. The rhythm and the pitch of the ancient chant gradually grew greater and greater.

She felt the addictive feeling of power that had attracted many new Acolytes over the millennia. It has destroyed more than its fair share of Acolytes to. They felt it once or twice then went mad, or craved it above anything else, starving themselves of food and water, taking in nothing but exhilarating magical power, which gradually became less exhilarating once you grew used to it, that was when the addicted ones finally cracked. The strength and the will to use it flowed through her body. She jerked as it ran down her arms and legs and she laughed manically, needing to release the energy inside her.

Then it was gone, and she returned slowly to her levelheaded normal state of existence.

The air in the centre of the summoning circle was swirling and howling, light blazed out from the core of the power, forcing the Emissary to avert her eyes. She saw shadows playing on the wall she was staring at, keeping her eyes away from the maelstrom of blinding light in the circle. The light took longer to die away than the power surge, but it did eventually, and it left something far more important than the power surge had behind it.

She turned her eyes firmly shut and prostrated herself before the ting in the centre of the circle.

She began to speak in a clear ringing voice,

"Lord thy greater purpose,

Is upheld in I,

I shall never cross thee,

'Till the day I die.

I beg thy assistance,

Show me now the way,

And I shall follow thee,

'Till my dying day.

Victory uphold thee,

Never to look back,

Glory shall enfold thee,

Nothing thou shall lack.

I am here to serve thy,

Wishes and thy call,

Show the road before me,

Enemies shall fall.

Lordship victory nears,

On the battle plain,

All our foes shall fall there,

And feel the endless pain."

A voice filled with millennia of hunger malice and hatred spoke, or roared, "Arise servant, and speak quickly for I am not best pleased to listen."

The sound of the voice sent shudders running through the Emissary's body, and awoke doubt in her, it was the first time she had ever not been fully confident, and it was frightening beyond even the bestial presence in the centre of the chamber.

Raven sat bolt upright in bed. She felt pain unlike anything before it, a heaving, wrenching, tearing. It filled her mind until she could contemplate nothing else, it seemed that it had always been this way, and that it always would be this way, life was not worth living, it was filled only with searing agony.

She writhed in her mind, her body a useless appendage; muscles twitched sporadically, their purpose forgotten. Her body was abandoned by the mind that controlled it, as it became totally immersed in the torture streaming through it.

Raven keeled over onto the floor, her body thrashing in imitation of her psyche. She spasmed and twisted uncontrollably, filled with fire that nothing could remove.

She screamed against the throbbing, her voice gradually rising out of the audible spectrum.

Her friends with Cyborg at their head burst through her door. Beast Boy ran to her, and her hands grasped at him, jerking him off his feet, he fell over her and skidded to a halt on the other side of the room. He crawled back and looked into her unrecognisable face.

Her mouth was open in an above audible shriek, tears were streaming down her cheeks unchecked, her eyes were staring straight ahead, and every muscles was pulled taut, screwing up her face into a contorted snarl. Hair was plastered to her head by the sweat rolling freely from every pore.

Cyborg was crouching beside her now and shouting frantically at Robin, and Starfire was standing back in shock, not sure how to think or act.

Raven suffered for a seemingly endless time then she felt the fire fade, slowly, gradually. After more agony filled minutes her screaming dropped back into the audible range and soon stopped altogether, the deathly pain was gone.

Robin ran to the couch as he heard the scream, and stared down at Raven, willing her to be all right as the heart-rending sound of mental torture ceased. He watched as her face lost the tension in it, as the stream of tears from her eyes was stemmed, as the sweat stopped flowing. He waited silently as her violet eyes unfocused.

Raven's eyes unfocused and her mind attempted to recover. It was strange, she thought, that such agony could leave behind such freedom. She felt loved. She felt wanted. She felt friendship.

Raven's self control stepped in, and stopped the train of thought; she would look at where it led later. It was obvious that something out of the ordinary was happening; an empath trained in control of emotion and mind does not fall unconscious in shock then turn into a screaming wreck if events are merely routine. Had anything out of the ordinary happened to her? No, she didn't think so. Had she acted in this way before? Not that she could remember. So it was all a puzzle, perhaps she should enter into her Mindscape, perhaps there it would become clear.

The thought sparked another thought, the dream, what was its connection with the affair?

She turned her mind to the prescient vision; she had met Hatred, which usually coincided with her feeling hatred in real life, and she had not felt it yet, therefore the events of the vision would not begin yet.

So when would they begin?

Questions gnawed at Raven's brain, her mind was fluctuating, and she had had a prescient dream, something important to her was happening, and she had no idea what it was.

Apart from the "symptoms" nothing out of the ordinary had happened, so what could the cause be?

Pondering was pointless; it would all become clear in time.

She walked quietly out of her corner of the Common Room and retrieved a book from a shelf in her room. Instead of settling down on her bed as she would normally returned to the Common Room and sat on the sofa beside Cyborg who was gaming energetically. She curled her legs up feline under her body and immersed herself in the chapters of her tome, she didn't complain when either Beast Boy or Cyborg jumped with cries of victory.

No one noticed her, being wrapped in his or her own separate worlds. Cyborg and Beast Boy locked in furious competition, Robin and Starfire in earnest conversion on the side of the large central room of Titan's Tower.

Soon she had quite forgotten the past twenty-four hours, which went to show just how much she was acting strangely.


	4. Templar Night

** Author's Note: **My apologies for taking a while to update. Obviously this chapter (and indeed the rest of the story) is dedicated to Lennox RH and evilsangle, the two people who havve managed to review. I'm finished, read on.

_RegisSantia_

**Templar Night  
**

The Grandmaster bestrode the floor of one of the larger halls of the Temple; apart from a few of the higher-ranking technomancers clustered around a table at the other end of the vast chamber the hall was empty of life.

Communication with his emissary had been suspended while slaves were being gathered into the vast Sacrificial Camps. It seemed that the Temple had no minions to spare, that was infuriating, the Temple should have a surplus of slaves, the Temple should have a surplus of everything.

He moved over to the table spread with maps and charts being pored over by head technomancers.

The commanding technomancers were all straight-faced, calculating, and ruthless individuals. They had to be, the upper echelons of technomancy in the Temple had a separate and incomprehensible political system, it put the most toughened by life as part of a culture where mass human sacrifice was commonplace in power, and destroyed any still sensible to the suffering of others. The four overall heads of technomancy that came out on top were always practiced in practical technomancy, and it was impossible to find anyone better versed in the theory of the practice that was part art, part science, and part religion.

The Grandmaster knew all of this, not knowing it would have been unbearable for him, but despite the obvious ability and intelligence of the men he was dealing with he still regarded them as inferior. He had nothing in his mind but contempt for all except the Templars. A serious flaw, which he was dangerously unable to recognise.

He halted standing opposite the most senior of the technomancers.

"Slaves are being gathered into the camps," it was a statement.

"Yes lord, some are being incensed before time just to speed up the process," replied the Master of Mechanics, the title the technomancers afforded their overall commander, on the opposite side of the table.

The Grandmaster snarled within his cowl, "When I make a statement I do not require conformation inferior."

"My humble apologies lordship," replied the Master of Mechanics with a bow that might not have been so servile and low if it had not been needed to hide the expression on his face.

The Grandmaster sneered at the kowtowing minion, then returned his attention to the desk in front of him.

"How soon can the plan be implemented?" he barked at the second highest ranked technomancer.

"When every slave has been herded into a camp the procedure may begin," said the woman to whom the question had been addressed with a dull lifeless face.

While the Master of Mechanics had reacted to being a man whose orders caused the deaths of thousands by becoming cruel and bitter this one obviously took the route of feeling nothing at all. Most of the senior technomancers took this approach to easing their tortured souls. Some, who ruled purely because of their overriding competence, there had been a few in the Grandmaster's time, tried to make the Temple a "better place" through their influence. The thought was laughable, what could be better than the Temple where the correct order of things, inferior races ruled by superior Templars, was enforced strictly.

An Acolyte who wore dignity like a cloak approached the Grandmaster and spoke, "The Templars are rallied and awaiting your address."

"Very good," replied the Grandmaster striding after the man with long paces.

After several turns through winding tunnels and spacious halls the Grandmaster walked through a heavy wooden door onto a large balcony.

Before him the entirety of the Order Templar stood in a carefully arranged pattern. The rows of bodies were arrayed so well that they appeared to be radiating outwards from the balcony and the single stories worth of dark Temple wall beneath it.

The Grandmaster saluted, raising his hand in the ancient gesture that had been a secret method of identification before the Temple came to power.

The crowd saluted back en masse as their leader began to speak.

His words inspired raw emotion. Every figure in the crowd below saw their ultimate destiny as the rulers of all life, the Master People, the lords of an empire that would last a thousand times a thousand years.

He spoke on, stirring the crowd up into a teeming mass of raw emotion and passion. Time seemed to stop as his speech worked surely on the minds of the listeners, strong well used words enforced subconsciously by the calculated gestures of his arms and the tones of his voice. The Grandmaster addressed the crowd until it was impossible to go on. And the crowd listened until they were swept away in the wave of pure feeling created by his words.

He ended his speech with one final salute which was returned by the thronging, cheering, screaming mass on people below him with vigour.

Any normal crowd would have been brainwashed to the point of ritual suicide by the Grandmaster's speech. But the crowd was not normal. The people were Templars, trained from birth to accept the hideously twisted propaganda of their regime and revel in it.

The Grand master was pleased with himself as he swept away to witness the incensing of the first camp of slaves.

Victor Townsend, accomplished thief and man of many unsavoury talents was congratulating himself on a good night's work. Too many criminals were soft these days, there was no competition. He followed a strict rule: no witnesses, no bodies.

His strict adherence to this rule had seen him through the bad times as well as the good, and now he was undisputed ruler of the minor scale criminal underworld that gnawed continuously at the roots of Jump City society.

The burly man turned a corner and walked down a lamp lit street. The streetlights towered above him, like hunched spirits bearing devilish orange lanterns. He moved with confidence through the pools if light thrown on the ground by the lamps overhead and turned off to the left.

Now he was walking down a dark alleyway, one of the myriads of dark and unwelcoming side streets that crisscrossed the city. His feet fell silently, that came with experience.

The street was blissfully quiet. No, wait it wasn't. He flicked around drawing a small but unmistakable knife. There was nothing, nothing to have caused the rustling. The passage behind him was quite literally empty. There was no cat skulking in the shadows, no leaves, it was nearing the end of autumn, nothing at all, not even a carelessly discarded crisp packet.

He turned slowly and began to walk again, but his gait had lost a part of its confidence, and gained in wariness.

After a few minutes his assurance returned, along with his ability to convince himself he must have imagined the noise, but then he heard it again.

He whirled on his feet, nerves in shreds. Had he been in a normal state of mind he would have been wondering, how could such a small and unimportant sound cause him to lose all of his self-confidence, his self-control?

One person could quite easily have answered these questions, and she dropped from the sky to stand behind his back.

Townsend span to face the young woman behind him, his last mistake.

All he saw was the glint of moonlight off a silver blade as it plunged into his throat.

The Emissary watched dispassionately as her prey fell clutching at its neck. It was really to easy to hunt them, all it required was a gradual siphoning off of self confidence and an unexplainable distraction, simple.

She crouched down removing a ring that seemed to be all jewel from her left hand and placing it on the recently deceased thief's chest. She muttered unintelligibly for several second before replacing the ring on her hand next to three identical rings and swooping off, leaving the corpse to rot.

She landed again in one of the many abandoned warehouses supported by Jump City Docks since it had ceased to be an important port.

Eight rings were placed on the ground, there was little ritual. The sorcery was designed to be brutal. She flew out of the building to perch on one nearby.

With trembling fingers she took a matching broach from the seemingly infinite folds of her clothing. She suppressed the nervousness in her body and snatched at a heavily ornamented mallet that hung from the side of her belt. Her hands shook as she ripped the mallet off the belt along with the hook it hung on.

She placed the broach on the dusty flat roof and raised the mallet above her head, a head which suddenly found itself flooded with second thoughts.

The sensation of insecurity and indecision was new to her. She found it uncomfortable and no matter how hard she tried there was no getting rid of the voice in her head.

When she had seen Trigon she had felt awed terror, if this was the father, how could she hope to better the daughter who had been able to hold him at bay? She had completed the ceremonies described by Trigon, the weakenings, the tortures, but it didn't seem at all important, she would face the daughter of Trigon, and she must win. Regardless of unfaithful voices in her head. She screwed her eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, and brought her mallet hard down in the broach.

The mallet flashed and smashed the broach to powder instantly.

The Emissary smirked in victory and looked over to the warehouse with the rings in it. She recoiled pulling her cloak up in front of her eyes as the building and much of the ground around it erupted in a glorious fireball.

The great tower of flame rushed upwards and billowed out engulfing walls, ceilings, and unfortunate stray animals.

Soon the pillar of orange and red had risen high above the small rings which gave it birth.

Minutes passed as the blaze settled over the great coastline and fizzled out leaving great plumes of smoke rising up. An obvious marker of destruction and carnage.

Crouched on the roof opposite the dying flames the Emissary watched. Destruction would bring her the daughter of Trigon, and then the daughter of Trigon would bring the Temple the one thing it had been created to find.

The Emissary smiled her snarling smile, and settled down to wait.

It wouldn't be long.

Raven sat in her room, eyes closed hands laid on her knees. She didn't feel like meditating. Well, you'll just have to meditate anyway, she thought, addressing herself in the second person.

She cleared her mind of distraction, withdrawing into herself, accompanied by the soft repetition of her timeless mantra, "Azarath, Mentrion, Zinthos." The chant worked like the charm it was, lulling her into meditative concentration.

She sat motionless, until she was interrupted by a knock on her door.

"Yes," she barked, annoyed.

She reached out psychically to it and it swung open.

Beast Boy stood outside. "Dinner is served," he said, and walked away.

Raven followed him. She took a seat in the large common room and took the plate of food offered her.

The team ate in silence, and when they finished Raven stood abruptly and left.

"Is she more grumpy than usual?" asked Cyborg watching her walk out of the door, cloak swirling behind her.

Raven returned to her room, and paced along its deep carpets, up and down… up and down… up and down.

She sat down, restless, and pulled a book towards her. She looked vaguely at the page wondering, not wondering about anything, just wondering.

She read the same line four times, then gave the book up as a lost cause. She returned to her pacing, her expression vacant.

Focus, she told herself, focus on why you're unfocused. But she would not focus, some part of her refused to allow it, and so she moved around for a good ten minutes, doing useless things for about ten seconds apiece.

She sat at the small piano in the corner of her room, and played something that came to her mind.

"Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide

No escape from reality."

She sang with a clear ringing voice that bounced and reverberated of her walls, filling her room with sound. Beast Boy appeared in her doorway.

"I didn't know you could play the piano Rae," he said.

Instead of shouting for calling her Rae Raven said, "I learnt in Azarath."

Azarath, thought Beast Boy, where have I heard the word before? Then it struck him. "Azarath, that's the first word in your chant thingy, it's a place?"

"It was a place," corrected Raven, "a beautiful place, I grew up there, until my father destroyed it." Anger flared behind her eyes as she battered the keys of her piano.

"So if Azarath is a place, what do the other words mean?" inquired Beast Boy.

"Other words?" said Raven, the touch of her fingers on the keyboard returning to a gentle caress.

"You know, in your chant, Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos."

"Ah."

She turned on her piano stool to face him, "The language is Azarathi, and the chant has been used in Azarath for centuries."

She cleared her throat quietly and began, "Azarath was where I was born and brought up, a community set up for the peace and plenty of its members, I was taught by the ruler, Azar," her eyes had taken on a far away look at odds with her usual sharp focus, "that is, until my dear father Trigon destroyed the place." She spat the words dear father with ultimate venom. "In Azarath there was a building called the Metrionomicon, the sorcerous hub of the nation the meeting place of a collection of mages of great power. Metrion is the Azarathi word for magic or sorcery. And finally Zinthos means come to me. Azarath Metrion Zinthos. Sorcery of Azarath come to me."

"I never knew that," said Beast Boy quietly.

"I never told you," Raven replied. She looked at him, "Beast Boy?"

The green changeling was pointing out of her window, seemingly frozen in horror.

Raven turned to see a great cloud of smoke forming itself into the symbol of Trigon, a vast daemonic visage, over the dark waters of the harbour. The sound of the explosion rippled over them, forcing Raven to cover her ears.

The two of them sprinted into the Main Room and took off, Raven levitating psychically, Beast Boy becoming a majestic eagle. Raven waved a hand at Cyborg encasing him in Darkfire and they flew out of the rapidly opening window, followed by Beast Boy and Starfire carrying Robin.

Raven stared into the cloud of smoke formed into a massive horned head with a fanged snarl and burning eyes.

Hatred flared within her, hatred for the daemon father who had forced her into a life of isolation and withdrawal.

Raven hovered before the cloud, surveying the devastation below her with a wary eye.

Starfire and the rest of her team came to a halt beside her. Robin looked at her questioningly, "What does the symbol mean?"

"Its Trigon," said Raven bluntly.

"Will there be anything down there to attack?"

"I don't know," replied Raven, "the last time I saw it it was floating above the ruins of Azarath." As she said this her face became immobile and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply.

"OK" said Robin, "Titans g-"

He was cut off in mid line by a bolt of energy streaming up from the ground. Starfire swerved away from the pulsing beam of purple light as the Titans dived to Earth.

They landed in battle stances on the smoke choked floor of the destroyed warehouse.

Raven looked around; there was something here, something beyond the ordinary levels of evil.

She peered into the smoke and barely heard Robin shout, "Stick together!" She fell back towards his voice, hands raised for a fight. Her empath sense was dulled, she couldn't feel any of the people around her, panic flooded into her mind. She staggered, hand outstretched to find a wall to support her. She fell slowly but was caught by a pair of strong arms.

She was about to turn to see who had caught her when a knife, cold, hard and, to her horror, psychically unmovable, pressed against her throat, "One move and you die daughter of Trigon."


	5. Snow Bites

**Author's note: **I've decided to celebrate this chapter in a military waySo, Lennox RH, Evilsangle, I salute you. (It's a British salute, being, as I am, British.) Lennox RH, I'm sorry to disappoint you but the violence in this chapter isn't my best, of the combat I have written so far I'd say the best takes place in orbit above Tamaran.

**Snow Bites**

The Grandmaster watched as slaves filed into a vast chamber below him. The glass between the two poles of power, almighty and helpless, was slightly frosted, impeding vision. That annoyed the Grandmaster.

"The procedure will begin in a few minutes," said a blank faced Technomancer standing at a console on his left.

The Grandmaster smiled eagerly, "Good."

The Technomancer wanted to scream. He wanted to strangle the Grandmaster, to humiliate him, to show him the pain and despair he had inflicted on all of the people the Temple ruled.

His superior signalled to him that the procedure was ready. If anything infuriated him more than the bloody grandmaster and his crowd of daemon worshipping bastard henchmen it was the technomancers above him.

Ever since he had been transferred to the sacrificial mechanics division he had been given orders by cruel and vicious men who revelled in the suffering and pain that they caused, that sentenced their former countrymen to death in the most hideous ways without qualm, hesitation or a moment of second thought. He hated them. Hated them with a hot burning hatred that he could never quench. They made the brainwashed Templars seem angelic.

The man who had gestured to him to begin the incensing was behind him, "Idiot! Why are you staring into space like some meaningless slave! The procedure is ready to begin, get moving before I throw you in the room with them!"

The Technomancer turned rage on his face, "No sir."

"What?" asked the man leaning over his shoulder. He didn't look enraged, he didn't even look angry, just surprised.

"I said no sir." Replied the Technomancer with an acid smile.

"That insubordination would earn you an incensing, but seeing as I'm feeling generous I'll let you get away with a weeks fasting and a months half rations if you begin the process immediately," hissed the superior whose uniform showed him to be a Technomancer Master.

"To hell with you sir," answered the Technomancer, feeling pleased with the shocked look on his superiors face and with his own courage. He knew courage would be short-lived, as short lived as he was going to be.

"Insubordinate wretch!" shouted the Technomancer Master drawing himself up to his full height.

Hatred and anger, pain and fury fuelled the Technomancers blow. His fist landed in the stomach of the man towering in front of him. The Technomancer Master fell doubled up gasping in pain. He smashed his hand home again, knuckle crunching against his opponents nose. The blood began to flow.

He watched with a sneer as his enemy fell backwards. He snarled, hatred robbing him of everything save brutality, he raised his foot and brought it slamming down, again and again.

Firm arms grabbed him from behind and a cold voice said a few words that pinned his arms to his sides and his legs together.

He was dragged down a flight of stairs onto the floor with the execution chamber. The door opened and the two guards carrying him hurled him forwards.

Instead of falling onto a cold stone floor he was caught by a female slave who was roaring in defiance and charging as part of a great mass towards the Temple guards.

The Grandmaster turned away from the doorway and the bloody wreck of the Technomancer Master and looked back through the window of the execution chamber.

The slaves were not standing in subdued rows. That was wrong, they were swearing up at the window, and surging towards the door. He was shocked to see the door was open.

He wheeled to see the door into his control room burst open.

A slave charged in carrying one of the double-headed spear swords, short staffs with great blades on each end, used by the guards. She charged straight for him swing the top blade of her weapon down. The metal clanged off blade of the staff he had snatched from a guard on his right.

The slave girl brought her blade down again and again as the rabble poured into the room, forcing the Grandmaster, his guards and the technomancers who stayed on his side back against the wall.

The grandmaster shouted an order and his guards closed ranks around him, backing against the wall and holding their pikes out in front of them in a kind of defensive wall.

Losing the initial momentum of their victory and the certainty that came with it the attack on them faltered. A quick thinking technomancer had sealed all the doors, trapping most of the slaves in the Execution Chamber, and sealing the rest of them off.

The guards were still trapped and outnumbered thirty-to-one.

The Grandmaster signalled to his defenders to keep protecting him and withdrew into the middle of the defensive circle.

He chanted for several minutes, then jumped up in victory and looked into the execution chamber.

Great three metre high forms were stomping among the petrified slaves, smashing down great broadswords and effortlessly crushing skulls. Within mere minutes all the slaves in the hall were dead, but the rebels in the control room renewed their attack.

The Grandmaster punched a button on the window side console. The Execution chamber began to fill with incense. He tapped another button and the doors unsealed, then he teleported from the control room, leaving everyone in it and the corridor to die a slow and excruciating death.

The Emissary smirked, "Really daughter of Trigon, I expected more than this."

"Who are you?" asked the girl weakly, obviously trying to move her throat as little as possible.

"Hah!" sneered the Emissary.

She dimly heard the leader of this pathetic little band calling, "Raven?"

"So daughter of Trigon, your name is Raven."

The girl she had caught said nothing.

"Now we must leave, or I might have to face the inconvenience of fighting your friends," said the Emissary with a smirk. She muttered an incantation and felt the tingle of teleportation.

The two of them appeared in a snow-covered field.

The Emissary looked out, the setting sun at her back. Only a few metres behind her was a small wood. In front of her the fields rolled away, all crisp with the late November snow. Here and there, mainly on her left, she could see little pockets of trees. The ground sloped away slightly in front of her so that by the time it got to the horizon stained silver by the tendrils of city suburbs it was substantially lower. Grey clouds hung heavy in the sky, filling the seen with a brooding air enhanced by the streaks of red caused by the sun dipping slowly below the horizon.

An artist would have called the view from the shallow hill bleakly beautiful, to Raven it seemed it was just bleak, and to the Emissary it was prime territory for Templar "conversion" the process of harvesting all the soul bearing life and turning the rest of the terrain into a vast engine to support the arcane practices of the Temple.

She heard Raven whom she had dumped in the freezing snow struggling to her feet. She turned, "So daughter of Trigon, what will I do with you?"

"You will surrender to me," said Raven through gritted teeth.

Really, these people were laughable, "Come then, show me why, attack."

"My pleasure," Raven replied thrusting her hand forwards to throw a ball of Darkfire that wasn't there. Raven stared at her hand as if it had betrayed her.

"You'll have to do better than that!" the Emissary cackled, she might have some fun with this girl's allies before enslaving them. Raven stared blankly at her captor; her resolve seemed to have evaporated. The Emissary felt called upon to explain. "This field has been prepared for us, you will not be able to your abilities on anything within three miles, and you won't be moving further than three metres."

She waved a contemptuous hand at Raven who floated before her to the wood; the foremost tree had a heavy metal chain attached to it. The Emissary clamped it to Ravens ankle.

"Just in case your friends manage to escape me I'll need any location devices you're wearing."

Raven stood mutely in front of her.

"Well if you won't give them to me I'll must take every thing on you except the cloak," said the Emissary. She proceeded to do so.

"Don't worry daughter of Trigon, I won't let you die of cold, we're not finished with you yet."

She teleported away from the slightly dazed girl wrapped in the long blue cloak and into the middle of a busy street.

Cars swerved to avoid the figure, screeching onto the pavements and crashing against each other to the chorus of laughter from the Emissary. More came speeding from behind them, too fast to turn or stop. Soon the Emissary stood in the centre of a small circle surrounded by a sea of devastation.

Several fires burned in the wreckage as the Emissary cackled with glee, looking at the destruction her mere appearance had caused.

She reached out into the minds of Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg, subconsciously telling them of the damage.

Within five minutes the Titans arrived to see a dark robed figure surrounded by wrecked cars strewn with the either unconscious or dead forms of police officers.

The Emissary's pale face stared up at the figures circling her with every appearance of satisfaction.

She heard Robin's voice float down to her, "Surrender!"

Her harsh and mocking laugh was all the answer he needed.

He barked his signature line as the Emissary launched herself into the air narrowly dodging a Starbolt and a blast from Cyborg's sonic cannon.

She blasted into the air as her adversaries dived to Earth. With evil grace she rained down golden energy onto her foes and lazily dodged whenever the alien and the half machine on the ground returned fire.

An unexpected Starbolt hit her suddenly in the stomach. She lost her concentration and not being a natural sorceress but one created by a magical culture she tumbled from the sky.

The alien swooped across and caught her, setting her upon the ground. The Emissary's eyes flickered open and the alien bent over looking concerned. The Emissary lifted a hand and sent out a blast of blinding light that left the alien clutching at her deep green eyes.

The Emissary was airborne again and she fought on.

Soon she realised that if the fight went on for too long she would make a fatal error. She quickly decided upon a way of ending the battle.

She swept down towards the leader, grabbing the hem of his cape and hoisting him high in the air.

She turned to see the alien following her into the sky. She stopped rising and turned to see the creature standing in the air, hands glowing green, eyes blazing with an identical shade. "You will put him down," the things voice was quiet and determined.

"Why of course," smiled the Emissary, dropping her quarry from above the height of an office block, she watched the alien shrieked and dived towards him, as he fumbled with his belt and swung to safety. She was so absorbed that she allowed herself to be grabbed from behind by the massive talons of a great green eagle. She shrieked in protest and couldn't focus to build up the psychic energy to throw of the creature and was hit squarely by a sonic blast. She fell instantly unconscious.

Raven shivered, it was late afternoon on a November night and she was getting very cold. She hoped fervently that the when the woman had said that she wouldn't let her die she had been sincere.

In Azarath such crude matters as survival were not considered worth teaching. It was obviously more important to be able to play music and write in calligraphy and compose poetry and fence with three different types of sword. For the first time she saw Azar's great weakness, her love of nobility and peace had created a utopia. A utopia where mental strength and appreciation of art and beauty was increased tenfold, but where physical toughness all activities associated with it was neglected.

Raven had natural strength of will and a physical condition improved by crime fighting, but she'd never been taught to apply it to situations like the one she found herself in.

She despaired of finding a solution without her the use of her power, and subconsciously her thoughts were guided towards any way she could use them.

Her captor had said she couldn't use them within a three-mile radius. She couldn't use them then, simple as that. Despite this her irrational drive to survive continued to search for some loophole that would save her life.

She couldn't use her powers within three miles. Could she get three miles away? No. She was attached to a massive tree with a strong new chain attached firmly round her ankle.

She couldn't use her powers within three miles. Was there something else she could use? No. The woman who had brought her here had taken everything, absolutely everything, from her except her cloak so there was nothing she could use.

She couldn't use her powers within three miles. What about outside three miles? Could she, for example telepathically watch events outside the three-mile open prison? She let her mind wonder over the city, and it worked. But what she saw was not pretty.

Over one of the busy streets near the centre of the city was a great plume of smoke, she flew over to it and saw the battle between her friends and her new enemy unfold. She watched with alternating pride and horror until the battle ended.

When it ended she followed as the Titans trooped back to the warehouse with the smoky mark of Trigon hovering over it, their enemy carted off in a prison van. She realised that her friends had no idea where she was. It was quite shocking that this hadn't occurred to her before, she was meant to be intelligent.

Perhaps here was a way to lead them to her. She couldn't whisper into their subconscious, it was against her basic inhibitions. But there was another way. It was rank with the scent of daemonic possession, but her life was at stake, it was the only choice.

Beast Boy heard a voice; it seemed to already inside his brain and didn't need to come through his ears. The words were unclear but it sounded like, "Raven?"

"Yes Beast Boy, it's me, let me in."

Beast Boy was quite understandably confused by disembodied voices asking to be let in to nowhere. "In where?"

"Into your head," said the voice whose tone sounded very much like Raven as it said this.

"OK" said Beast Boy slowly and unconvinced.

Raven entered his mind. To her wandering consciousness it was like finally lying down after walking for days. There was plenty of clutter in Beast Boys mind, very little of it locked away, most of it floating around near the surface. Raven looked around for a few more seconds, she was wrong, there was plenty locked away, but lots open for anyone to see as well.

Partly out of respect for her friend partly out of fear of what she might find out Raven refrained from looking at any of the emotions and memories in Beast Boys head.

She found the experience of inhabiting a new mind distinctly uncomfortable. She spoke to Beast Boy, "My body is lying in a snowy field somewhere west of the city, about six miles away. I need you to help me very soon or I might die." It was a plain statement, anyone else would have sounded like they were pleading, but not Raven. She said that she needed you and let you make your decision.

"OK," said Beast Boy, "I'll get the others."

Raven felt a surge of pride and happiness in the abilities and trust of her friend.

"Thanks," she said, the word crammed full of pent up emotion.

Beast Boy grinned broadly and went to find Robin, Starfire and Cyborg.

Raven watched from the back of Beast Boy's mind as the titans reacted to the news. When Beast Boy told them what she had said, Starfire gasped to hear that Raven was in fatal danger, Cyborg wordlessly started up the T-car parked outside the warehouse and Robin patted Beast Boy on the back consolingly.

The four of them set off on the outbound road towards where Raven lay, gradually moving closer to the boundary of the zone where Raven would be able to guide them no more.

Beast Boy was intrigued by the sensation of having Raven guiding his actions from the back of his mind. She seemed so much more open when she was there, perhaps it was just the tone of her voice, but there was less guarded caution, less awkwardness.

Raven had never been in anyone's mind before; it would only have been useful in a fight, and to destroy someone's mind from within seemed to her to the most evil act possible.

Raven had Beast Boy stop the T-car just outside the three-mile radius of psychic blankness. She told the Titans where she was as best she could and watched psychically for a few seconds as they walked through the boundary that she couldn't pass.

Raven returned her mind to her body. Comfortable in the knowledge that her friends would find her, she fell unconscious.


	6. End of an Age

**Author's Note:** My apologies to you evilsangle, I hope you find the next chapters can induce you to forgive me. I will attempt to remember this bond and, Lennox RH, the dinosaurs. I hope you like this chapter.

_Regis Santia_

**End of an Age**

The Grandmaster suppressed the urge to wring his hands and pace frantically.

He forced himself to think instead, hoping that he could absorb himself in musings and let the time slip by.

Was it better to be ignorant of an important until it happened or to know of it in advance so that everything else seemed insignificant and time passed at a crawl?

Naturally thought the Grandmaster, it was better to know, it was always better to know. But if one didn't know in advance one couldn't be disappointed, that would cut out the agonised hours of waiting and make the event a pleasant surprise.

Only one problem there, the Grandmaster hated surprises. They were sudden revelations throwing open the evidence of ignorance in a great mockery of the surprised.

He glanced up at the chronometer.

Then he gave in.

He paced. He shouted. He had slaves sacrificed to put him in a temporary coma.

The Grandmaster lay motionless, unaware of the passing hours.

After three hours his eyes jerked open. He stood up and looked around. Where was he? He couldn't remember. He stared around frantically for some spark of remembrance. It just looked like a stone room. Nothing more, nothing less. He panicked, collapsing onto the floor clutching his aching head. After around ten minutes his memories began to return to him. This was the Temple, one of the meditative chambers. The procedure of conjuring a coma caused temporary amnesia and blind panic.

The Grandmaster had never panicked before, he had never realised how painful it was.

He muttered the incantation that dissolved one of the walls of the meditative chamber.

He stepped out into the corridor, ignoring the Acolytes and Templars hurrying around, and purposefully made his way towards the Sanctum Sanctorum.

His eight comrade Masters were already sitting in their chairs. The Grandmaster took his place in the centre of the semicircle, gesturing to guards standing at the mighty doorways. The heavily armoured figures wrenched back the doors. Legions of Templars filed into the Sanctum Sanctorum. It was testimony to the skill of the Technomancer architects that they were able to build a single space able to hold all the Templar inhabitants of the expansive city-sized construction that they called the Temple.

The Grandmaster was nervous, he hated himself for it but it remained a part of him.

He stood and began the opening intonations of a several hour ritual.

The ceremonies and rites wore on, never stopping, never ending.

After three hours of chanting and gesturing the Grandmaster began to feel thirsty, and tired. Another half hour and he wished for nothing more than an end to everything, to slip away from consciousness.

After another half hour of torture it was finished.

And things began to happen. The Grandmaster felt the power surge course through his body with ultimate exultation. For a moment he glimpsed perfection. He had the strength to move worlds, the power to create anything with a single word. He was great, he was mighty, he was perfect.

Then it faded.

He was mortal once more.

There was no doubt; the Ultimate Solution had functioned perfectly. He could feel that the world was different; it was evident in the air he breathed. The air of ever-present doom hanging over the world that had penetrated every part of the Temple in its previous universe was gone. It seemed that the power of the Templars had faded slightly. And it had, without the daemonic presence of Trigon that had come with Templar expansion the sorcerous abilities of the Acolytes, Priests, Masters and indeed the Grandmaster had fallen in power, and the temple had no slaves to drive it along. The first move to be made in this new world was obvious.

General Lamentre of the Tamaranian Defence Corps was having a boring day at his desk. He hated days like that. In what seemed now like a previous life he had been a soldier, he had felt the touch of adventure on every trip into the void. His only failing was a tendency to be too good at his job. So good in fact that he had been prevented from doing it, he had been promoted.

The hateful peace of his quarters was shattered by the high-pitched wailing screech of the alarm. Lamentre took a second to strap his sword onto his belt before rushing out into the corridor and then into the void.

The sight that met his eyes was not pretty, his wide green eyes widened and his eyebrows shot upwards into his shock of red hair. His men, all of the noble blood that allowed them access to the arcane abilities of the great families of feudal Tamaran, flight, strength and the power to create the mighty "starbolts", were being forced back onto their defensive emplacements by small figures swathed in black robes that moved through the void with less than half the half the purpose and grace of the Tamaranian warriors. Obviously these attackers did not have a drop of noble blood in them.

Lamentre felt the battle lust that was so deeply printed into the Tamaranian mind flow through him. Drawing his rapier from its scabbard he howled his battle cry, which was barely audible in the high and almost airless upper atmosphere of Tamaran, and charged into the fray.

He struck left and right with his sword, each blow puncturing a chest and sending static clouds of rapidly freezing blood fountaining out into space. Seeing their commander the other Tamaranians rallied and counter attacked as the robed figures began to fall back.

Lamentre's arms swirled around him, killing and wounding enemies in a great storm of destruction. He lifted his hand and sent a starbolt blasting into the chest of one opponent and decapitated another in the same movement.

He laughed exultantly as the lust for battle inside him led him on a gruesome dance of death.

But the enemy was not finished yet. The foes who fought with clumsy sorcerous energies had caught the defenders by surprise with their initial onslaught were still being forced back by the finesse of Tamaranian warriors but their confidence appeared to be returning.

The frenzy of the fighting reached its peak. Tamaranians darted to and fro, delivering fatal stabs with their rapiers, the attackers responded with great balls of energy that they fired here and there, not caring whether they struck friend or enemy. Then the battle stalled. Behind the enemies a great rift had opened in the very fabric of space.

More fighters were streaming through it, joining the fray on the side of the attackers.

Lamentre rallied his men around him, shouting into his comm. crystal for reinforcements and soldiers to man the atmospheric defence batteries.

Then he and his defenders swept forwards in a final attack.

The Tamaranians streaked across space, rapiers shining and starbolts blazing.

Lamentre crashed into the enemy lines and knew he was going to die. He tore away his grey cape to reveal his shining red armour resplendent with the ancestral heraldry if his House.

Death swept out from him in waves as he struck out with his sword, his strokes as strong as a god's.

All around him warriors fell, sadness turning to anger as he took his revenge on their cruel killers.

He continued his charge into the heart of the enemy, his warriors, faithful to the very end, fell around him.

All to soon his force had dwindled to three men.

He and his two cousins, Sola're and Luna're all of the House of Shahellan stood side by side, each one tall as a tree, and strong as an ox.

And although each delicate stroke of the blade felled an assailant they were cut down.

Luna're fell with a great hole blown in his gut.

The two remaining Tamaranians fought on.

Sola're died on his own blade, wrenched from his hands and plunged into his throat as he slew the enemy that took his weapon with a starbolt.

The final Tamaranian above the atmospheric defence batteries continued his last charge.

Lamentre's body was blow apart by a massive orb of energy. He left no corpse, no bloody remains, he was simply destroyed. But, as would be remembered on Tamaran for generations, he died honourably.

Raven sat on her bed. Her legs were crossed and her eyes were smoothly closed. Her brow was free of lines and her mouth was very slightly curved into a miniscule smile.

It was the first time in days that she had been able to meditate properly. There was no nagging psychic presence at the back of her mind, no fuzzy empathic haze in front of her metaphorical eyes. She was at peace. She repeated her mantra in a soft voice, the rhythm of the words lulling her ears, dulling them against the sound of silence.

In her mind she ran over the events of the last days, it was the first time she had been able to remember them all together, the first time she had been able to remember them all clearly.

In the quiet depths of her psyche, away from the sections ravaged by Trigon in his latest infernal attempt at possession she analysed all of her thoughts, her feelings.

For the moment she was quite happy to merely to know what she would be feeling if she allowed herself to. Sometimes she yearned to feel the raw emotion pump through her. But then sometimes the very thought seemed frightening, as if she was a small child cowering away from something big and new.

A contented sigh, quiet and soft, escaped from her lips.

Then silence returned.

It was broken all too suddenly by a hysterical shriek.

Raven's eyes flicked immediately open. Gone was the meditative peace, and gone with it was her happy mood.

She jumped from her bed, her clear-cut features arranged in a grimace of annoyance.

She stalked through the tower towards Starfire's rooms, what had the alien done now?

She found the four other residents of the tower already in Starfire's room. Starfire herself was lying on her bed, crying uncontrollably. Robin was sitting beside her; a comforting hand on her shoulder. Raven noticed that he looked rather uncomfortable.

Cyborg and Beast Boy were standing back, quite happy to let Robin do the work.

Raven walked over to Cyborg and whispered, "What's happened?"

"No idea, she hasn't stopped crying for long enough to tell us."

Raven rolled her eyes and walked over to the tall girl.

She placed one finger on her back, then closed her eyes.

After around a minute Raven withdrew her finger and Starfire looked up.

"Thank you friend Raven."

Raven nodded shortly.

"So, Starfire," began Robin, "what's happened?"

"Oh Robin! It was horrible; I saw my cousin, Lamentre, and his comrades in the Tamaranian Guard being killed in a most terrible way! I fear that I am needed on Tamaran."

"You're going to Tamaran?" said Robin, looking stunned.

When he failed to say anything more Cyborg took control, "Yeah, and we're going with her."

Starfire managed a weak shaky smile in answer.

In amazingly short time, made possible by Cyborg's intimate knowledge of mechanics the submarine usually kept in a small pen underneath the Titan's tiny island had been converted into a space faring vessel.

Remarkably soon, the makeshift rocket was airborne. Moments afterwards it was space borne.

Of course humanity has no way of traversing the vast plains of space at the speed necessary to get to Tamaran from Earth within the lifetime of the average person.

Cyborg had come up with an ingenious solution to the problem. If the feat was physically impossible why should it be psychically impossible? Raven could teleport the ship across space in jumps taking minimal time.

Raven had welcomed the idea as a way to refocus herself after the confusion of the past week.

And so she found herself sitting in her small area of the "New Titanic," as the ship had been christened, with all manner of wires strapped to her skin. Neural grapples clutched at her temples, monitor cables ran down her arms and a metal bar encircled her waist.

"Okay Raven," came Cyborg's voice over the commlink. "Just a small jump to start with."

Raven closed her eyes, muttering her mantra under her breath.

She felt the power well up inside her, accompanied by a sensation of power and recklessness. Raven resisted it; all wrong roads lead to Trigon. Her hands tightened on their bars as the energy inside her rose to an almost unbearable level, bringing with it a daemonic hatred that marred any use of her innate abilities.

She released her hold and let the strength rush through her in an instant psychic discharge that sent the ship blasting out of existence and back again, overshooting the mark by quite a way.

In the next series of teleportations Raven refined her technique considerably.

So when the New Titanic reached Tamaran it materialised in high orbit, setting a course straight for the large space station.

Cyborg gazed out at the vast construction. Like all Tamaranian technology it was designed to be looked at as well as used. It took the appearance of a giant rose, seemingly made from solid rock and blood red in colour, it was an achievement completely alien to any on earth.

He spent a few more moments gazing at it then noticed the light playing around it.

Patterns of dancing green light crisscrossed the space around it, interspersed with balls of glaring white and great waves of purple.

" They having a firework display for the returning Princess?" he asked.

Starfire, Robin and Raven both replied at the same time, "No."

"Sensors are reading large energy discharges aimed at that station," shouted Robin, strapping his seatbelt and powering up the ships cannons.

Breathing in gasps Raven said, "There's anger, and pain, lots of pain." Her voice trailed of and she slumped in her chair.

"My comrades are dying!" shouted Starfire, her eyes glowing green.

The New Titanic swept forwards, passing once over the battle.

Then the newcomers engaged, Starfire flying out into the void and striking left and right with her fists and Starbolts. Beast Boy left the ship transforming into a giant creature that looked rather like a jellyfish. Cyborg took charge of the stun cannon mounted on a turret below the body of the ship and Raven projected a psychic shield around the ship as Robin sent them darting into the battle, muzzle cannons blazing.

The fire of Tamaranian passion for battle rushed through Starfire, the sight of nobles she had known like brothers from her time as Princess Korriandre fuelling it into as roaring inferno.

She charged into a group of robed figures. She landed her boot in the stomach of one and shot a Starbolt through the cowl of another at point blank range.

Three gathered together in front of her, holding out their hands and chanting in what must have been a shout but sounded like a whisper in the thin atmosphere.

Starfire ripped through them, green shrouded fists smashing them away with shattering blows.

Another one towards her preceded by a stream of pulsating energy. Starfire dodged it with ease and grabbed the hood of the enemy as he flew past, bringing her fist down on his with the force of a sledgehammer.

Royal anger shone from her eyes as she struck forwards to fight at the side of a tall Tamaranian warrior with wild hair and a crystal on his uniform that proclaimed him to be an archduke.

With the sword-swinging warrior at her side and the Light of the Chrysalis shining from her eyes she cut a massive swathe through the enemy.

Soon, with the assistance of the Titans, especially Beast Boy, who had stunned vast amounts of enemies in the tentacles of his new for, the enemy had been routed.

They streamed towards the rend in matter they had arrived from. But that rend was not stationary, it was moving slowly over the rose shaped space station.

Soon it had swallowed it completely and disappeared taking the space station and the ghostly attackers with it.

One day later, in the Royal Gardens on the surface of Tamaran seven figures sat around a table that seemed to be completely carved from a giant diamond.

Raven looked around at the gardens surrounding her. To her left was a solid wall of greenery made up of leaves of all sizes and shapes interspersed with bright flowers. Behind her was the royal patio, an expansive field of cobbles divided up by low hedges leading up to a castle that truly deserved the title "Wonder of a World." Then in front of her behind the tables and the Queen sitting opposite to her a set of terraces sloped away onto fields with a wide river running through them.

She turned her attention from the extravagant scenery to the monarch on the other side of the ovular table.

She was wearing purple Tamaranian garden robes, thin cloth intricately embroidered and inlaid around the cuffs and collar with gems. Her hair was red, red hair being a dominant gene among the royal and noble families of Tamaran. A small tiara perched upon her head, Raven could only guess at how much it would be worth on Earth, excluding the extra for being an artefact from an sentient alien civilization.

Her eyes were blue and strangely expressionless, Raven assumed that statecraft had taught her not to wear her emotions on her sleeve, despite the natural emotionality of Tamaranians.

She was speaking to them, as Starfire's friends more than as battle heroes.

Her voiced was velvet and full, and made everyone feel slightly sleepy.

Raven decided to listen for a while and see if anything of interest would crop up rather than the drivel that Starfire and her mother had begun the conversation with.

"Now, I have something more serious to say to you my friends," the monarch had taken to calling them all her friends rather quickly, "you came to Tamaran and helped us to defend our selves against an unknown evil, we are in your debt."

"Really, it was nothing," said Robin with the smile he always used when he said those words.

"Nonetheless," said the Queen, "we will present you with gifts as is customary and pledge our assistance to you in times of need."

Raven later learned from Starfire that debts on Tamaran were taken very seriously, and that there was a particular way of repaying those that you owed depending on the debt.

"Please my friends, come with me,"

She stood and led them, around the hedge behind her and around several corners in the green growing corridor up to another table.

There were four objects laid out on it.

The first was a staff. It was about the length of an arm. The metal was gold coloured and fluted, it looked like one of the flowers that Raven had seen in passing in the royal gardens. The ever-present gems that seemed so abundant upon Tamaran were inlaid around each end.

The Queen lifted it up and pressed one of the gems. The staff tripled in length almost instantly with a minute amount of noise. She proffered it to Robin who took it reverentially.

Robin thanked her profusely and Raven rolled her eyes. The Queen smiled and moved on to the second gift.

She presented it to Cyborg, it was apparently something that could create an interface between software from Earth and software from Tamaran, quite unsurprisingly it took the form of a crystal.

While she was giving Beast Boy his gift Raven turned her gaze on the sword obviously meant for her.

It lay within a black obsidian scabbard and had an ornate silver sabre hilt with a purple precious stone inlaid into the pommel.

The Queen lifted it from the table and gave it to Raven. She took it and drew the blade out of the sheath. Carved into the metal near the hilt were the words "Azarath Metrion Zinthos" in Azarathi characters.

Raven read them, then looked up at the Queen, "How do you know?"

"I can see it in your face, it's a special type of grace. I can tell by how you carry yourself that you come from Azarath," replied the monarch, her face suddenly shrewd and alert.

"How did you that Azarath existed?"

"A few survivors came to Tamaran after living through an ordeal they refused to speak about, after a while we learned more about them," was the reply.

After that the Titans spent two more days in the idyllic royal palaces on Tamaran before returning to Earth.

Across the endless gulfs of space the Templar expeditionary force was returning with its prize, but the Grandmaster didn't welcome it.

"No new land? No new farms? Slaves only? You have failed Commander; your incompetence has meant that the Masterful Plan will have to be undertaken when we are not fully prepared," he said to the commander of the group, his voice heavy with threat.

When he had finished berating the man he had him executed.

Then he ordered the preliminary phases of the Masterful Plan put in to action.

Uncounted light-years away, sleeping in her bed, Raven Roth shivered.


	7. Allegiance

**Author's Note: **Thanks to those who reviewed since I posted the last chapter, the revered Lennox RH and evilsangel as ever, and Seurat and Lady Shafala, I hope any of you that reads this chapter enjoys it. I had a cruel thought and decided tghat the beginning of the Templar's masterful Plan wwould be a good place to leave the Temple for a while and start a new subplott that will eventually result in a new original character. Whether good or evil is as of yet indefinite.

**Allegiance**

As the most proficient and deadly assassin to pass through the hidden gates of the training facility in Jump City Ursula Lazuli was the obvious choice for the mission she found herself entrusted with.

Her target was extremely elusive, an unknown quantity without any known history or records.

Her employer wasn't a great deal different; she had only ever spoken with his subordinates. It was going to be hard to collect the necessary information on them.

That was Guild policy. The theory was that if the police ever discovered them they could pass on all the information on who involved themselves in the business of assassination. Then, while the law was fumbling its way through the bureaucracy the Guild could vanish from its grasp.

She turned of the busy street and down a side road, shielding her chocolate coloured eyes from the sun.

Her thin blonde hair was cut reasonably short, ending just below her shoulders. She wore a long dark coat over old looking trousers and an overlarge white T-shirt.

The coat had small pockets of explosives sown into its lining while the voluminous cuffs of the T-shirt hid a miniaturized dart gun and roll of wire designed for garrotting.

Two small knives hung at the back of her belt.

She moved down the street nonchalantly and came out onto another broad crowded road, she didn't know whether she loved or hated the Christmas shopping season. It was, in her profession, a mixed blessing.

She boarded a cable car and rode down the hill from the commercial district into the tourist section of the old dockyards with her breath crystallizing in front of her face.

She walked by the stalls selling cruises round the harbour on resurrected steamboats and other leisure activities designed for a summer afternoon, not the opening weeks of December.

She took a left turning into a narrow street and ducked into a doorway. She ascended a communal stairway into a dingy flat she had rented under a false name.

She placed several new implements of death into various pockets on the inside of her coat. Then she left the building. She walked back through the plaza and moved in the direction of the storage areas.

She climbed a ladder that ran up the side of one of the hulking corrugated iron warehouses. The roof of the building was awash with slush that the faint heat of the sun had failed to clear.

She crouched low and pulled off her outer clothing to reveal a dark grey skin-tight jumpsuit.

Small Long blades ran along the outer edges of her arms, protruding only slightly from the material. They were to small to be of great use in combat, but would cause serious damage to any knuckle smashing into them too fast. A small tube ran from a container on her wrist to the nail of her index finger.

She drew the nail in a large circle across the iron roof, slowly enough for the concentrated acid in the tank to flow out and cut through the old ceiling.

She pulled her mask over her head then swung herself down to hang upside down from the girders that held up the roof.

A rotting wooden wall bisected the warehouse, hiding whatever was going on in the other side from her prying eyes.

She chose a small rotted hole in the wood and flicked the pin from a smoke grenade.

The assassin tossed the small black capsule through the hole and waited for the rumble of the silenced explosion. She felt it more than she heard it; a low rumbling that came up through the cracked concrete flooring.

She drew herself a door with the acid dispenser and kicked it open, bringing her heels together to bring the spurs on her heels sliding from their brackets.

She scanned the vast chamber with the heat sensor on her spy visor. There were three pulses of red, a massive computer system that seemed to take up an entire wall, the remains of her grenade, and a bulky male figure.

She swept towards the third, drawing her two knives, striking up into the stomach then the heart. The blade met metal and the clang echoed throughout the aging structure. The man's fist swung towards her head, amazingly accurately considering the thick curtains of smoke that surrounded them.

She dodged away from the fist and sent its owner flying after it with strength that was belied by her trim figure.

The smoke was clearing now, escaping through rust holes in the grimy and dilapidated walls and roof.

She deactivated the heat sensor to see her quarry in full colour.

He was a large man, covered completely in a suit of silver armour, on his head was a mask, split into two sections, one black, not grey as most black things are, but truly black, and the other orange with an inlaid into its surface.

Obviously knives were of no use, she replaced them in her belt and clipped the barrel of a strange gun and a power pack onto their receptacles on her left forearm, carefully avoiding the blade there.

She could see the target sizing her up; she almost imagined that shining eye narrowing.

Suddenly he charged, catching her off her guard. Just before the attack made contact she jumped backwards, landing perfectly on her feet ready to strike forwards herself. She did, her right fist whistling forward and smashing with a hideous screech against her target's mask. She brought her left hand up and fired a burst of energy that scorched the concrete black as the man rolled.

He pounded the S insignia at the centre of his chest and things stepped from the shadows, charged through the doors, and climbed up from a trapdoor. She recognised them from her briefing, they were robotic constructs of some kind.

She knew, or thought she knew, that robots were useless in combat. They couldn't adapt fast enough.

This would be easy, if it weren't for the massive numbers of the things.

They all came forward in a mass, trapping her in an ever-shrinking wall of metal bodies. She fought ferociously, striking left and right with the acid pump and incinerating rank upon rank of robots.

Eventually though they overran her and pinned her to the floor for her target to pronounce judgement on her.

He stalked towards her, the artificial eye glinting.

All of Titans' Tower was infused with Christmas spirit, apart from the little sanctuaries Raven had created for herself.

Maybe, just maybe, she might be in a very slightly better mood than normal. Although that was probably to be attributed to the defeat and imprisonment of the cultist that had invaded her mind.

She was meditating in the corner when Robin approached her.

Raven didn't bother to open her eyes, "Yes?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to-" He stopped as Raven's eyebrows rose in a gesture that said quite clearly, do you really need to ask? "Oh, OK," said Robin and Raven could sense him walking away. She felt vaguely guilty.

Several days later Raven awoke with a headache.

She sat up in her bed and placed her hands on her temples, her expression serene.

She heard someone knock on her door and turned towards it.

She opened it to see Cyborg. "What is it?" she asked, her voice tired and impatient.

"Come on dude, it's Christmas today," Cyborg said. Raven grunted noncommittally. "No come on Raven, you can't be grumpy every day of the year."

Raven felt the pressure inside her skull build up behind her eyeballs and managed to mutter, "Oh really?"

"Yeah. Now come and have fun." Raven managed a sarcastic expression, but she followed her friend.

Starfire had enthusiastically decorated the central room of the tower, you could tell. There was a magnificent specimen of a pine tree standing over a green and red rug hung with clashing tinsels and baubles of too many different descriptions. The rest of the room was a blaze of colours. Raven gazed into the glittering display of unsubtleness and sighed inwardly.

She sat down on the couch next to Robin and opened a newspaper.

He nudged her, "There's a present for you."

She looked down and saw it. Like all of the room the wrapping was a cataclysmic mixture of over enthusiasm and an image of what festivity should look like.

She gingerly picked up the explosion of ribbon. For some reason she was nervous, she chided herself for it. She managed to pick away the wrapping to reveal a cardboard box. Raven pried it open and picked the gift from its bed of packaging pellets.

She was amazed, not at the object itself, which was certainly worth a considerable chunk of the Titans' combined income, but that she actually liked it.

The object in question was a silver coronet, not lumpy and extravagant, but elegant and subdued. A silver band inlaid at the front with a single sapphire formed the base, and in the centre was a black velvet raven, with gems for eyes and silver for a beak. At the front was a small triangular section that sloped forwards and up to an apex that the raven's head rested in. The entire crown wasn't too heavy and rested nicely in Raven's hands.

"Do you like it," asked Robin eagerly.

"Yes, it's beautiful," she paused, then chokingly, "Thank you." She looked around at their smiles, and knew she was smiling herself. Not a grin, Raven didn't grin, but a small smile, slightly sad, but full.

As the day progressed Raven inexplicably found herself having a good time. She had to fight with every scrap of self-control in her mind to prevent herself from indulging and simply going too far. The fight was hard, harder than it ever had been in all but a few previous moments.

Yet at the end of the day not only had she enjoyed herself but she also had the satisfaction of knowing that she had kept herself under control.

And knowing that, she slept soundly.

She awoke the next morning with a vague feeling of disappointment. Apparently her good mood hadn't lasted. Ah well.

She stood and looked down at the coronet, a solitary tear in her eye. With it, laid out on her desk was the Tamaranian sabre and another item. Seeing it brought a bead of water into Raven's other eye.

She heard a knock on her door and turned slowly, briskly brushing the water from the corners of her eyes.

"Yes?"

Robin opened the door and walked in, "Hey Raven."

"Hello."

He looked quite uncomfortable; Raven noted that he was fidgeting slightly. She decided that she didn't have the time, "Did you have something to say?" she prompted, not unkindly.

"Well we thought we should tell you that nothing's exploded," he said, his eyes roving over the room.

"Oh that's a relief," said Raven her voice coated in a layer of sarcasm.

Robin pointed at something, "What's that?" he inquired.

Raven looked round and picked up the jewelled metal rod that lay beside the crown and sword, "This?"

"Yeah," he answered.

"It's a sceptre, which considering I've recently acquired a crown and a sword is rather appropriate."

"Where did you get it?"

"Like almost everything in this room it's a relic from Azarath. They're all very precious, I can't let people blunder in and damage them. Anyway, the sceptre, when Trigon mortally wounded Azar and left her to die she nominated me as her successor, as signified by the passing on of the sceptre. Ceremonially, that makes me the ruler of Azarath, or what's left of the place since it was destroyed," Robin could sense that she wouldn't say any more if she were pressed.

"So you've got a crown, a sword and a sceptre. What about state robes half a mile long?"

"Well," began Raven, the barest traces of a smile forcing its way onto her lips, "it's funny that you should mention that."

Robin gave a snort of laughter. "Could I see you in them?"

Raven raised an eyebrow, "Quite definitely not."


	8. Cold Steel

**Author's Note: **Cap'n Short, thank you for your glowing review, I'm very grateful. In response I wqould say that the Templars were not in fact coming to Earth but merely to the universe in which Earth exists. So they are on another planet, or perhaps an asteroid. Evilsangel, thank you as well, I am glad it is to your approval. I hope everyone enjoys this chapter.**  
**

**Cold Steel**

Ursula Lazuli cursed the day she had joined the guild, quite literally, when swearing failed to satisfy her she had to content herself with kicking a mark into the concrete wall of her cell.

Though she had been given considerable training in emotional manipulation when the despair of being caged came it carried all before it, destroying all the protections stony faced mentors had pounded into her mind.

There was nothing to stand against it, the monotony stretched hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months.

The faceless mask of her captor ambled into her mind and a particularly vicious kick sent a reasonable chunk of concrete flying past her shoulder.

From some hidden piece of technology came the smooth tones that belied sadistic and murderous intent, "Calm down my dear, you should spare your strength for your next assignment."

Despite the murderous fury the voice conjured Ursula's curiosity was piqued, "Assignment?"

"Oh yes, letting talent like yours rot in that hell hole would be most unproductive."

For a rare moment Ursula softened as she remembered her first instructor saying those words, then she realised what he would have thought if he had known she was becoming nostalgic in the middle of the enemy base of operations.

"I am not authorised to perform operations not sanctioned by the Guild," recited Ursula tonelessly. The phrase was drilled into every student to pass through the hidden gates, the Guild had its own interests to protect and unregulated assassins were very dangerous.

"How," the sickening voice paused, "disappointing."

The door to her cell opened and two of the robotic constructs marched in. They took her arms in their crushingly strong silver hands and dragged her out.

After days in the semi darkness of her cell the assassin found the bright light of the naked bulbs hanging from the ceil of the corridor nigh on unbearable.

Without thinking she shut her eyes, obviously this was what her captor wanted.

Eventually the light shining through her eyelids became less painful and she flutteringly opened them.

She was in yet another dingy hall that was undoubtedly part of the same decrepit complex. Standing on the boundary between shade and total darkness was her jailer.

"Now, are you sure you'd like to persist with your uncooperativeness?" he asked, face, voice, and posture unreadable.

"Of course."

"Then, I'm afraid, we will have to change your mind." He gestured and the robots tied her to the table in the centre of the room.

More constructs came forward. They surrounded her and their master clicked his fingers. The machines raised their implements and began to work.

Ursula had succumbed, she despised herself for it, her friends would have despised her for it, in fact, any of her old associates would have despised her for it.

Naturally the knowledge that the people amongst whose company you have you're life for the last years would hate you is not a great motivation, under normal circumstances that is.

But then, if she succeeded, she would be the only assassin ever to be successful in overcoming a target that had put the Guild's best operatives in jail. That might win back a little respect.

Of course that was assuming that she was successful, all those before her hadn't been.

Her target was possibly the single person in the City with the most prices on his spiky haired head. The Boy Wonder, The Cop's Nightmare, The T Man, the list of absurd nicknames went on and on.

Naturally attacking such a well-known and well-protected target on his own turf would be suicidal, fortunately, Ursula had a small army of robots at her command.

The plan was simple, yet completely watertight until the section where it began to try her own limitations.

By some agreement the Titans were allowed to be the first to be notified and to attempt to combat any activity bearing the hallmarks of her new employer.

Therefore, any disturbance perpetrated by her robotic thralls would automatically bring the Titans running.

So, with everything in position, all she had to do was lie in wait.

Raven sat solemnly in meditation, days had gone by, life was settling peacefully back into its old routine.

With a practiced ease tempered by annoyance Raven systematically blocked out all extraneous noise. First the moronic blaring of the console with which Cyborg and Beast Boy were so deeply infatuated, then the hum of the stove gradually manufacturing one of the instruments of torture that the Tamaranians called delicacies, finally she removed the pointless trifling chatter that for some reason beyond her comprehension managed to entertain her team mates.

Her breathing settled into a steady rhythm. She cleared her mind of all the excess clutter that had built up and began her soft chanting.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath Metrion Zinthos. Azarath Metrion Zinthos."

In seconds she was lost on an ocean of complete internal focus.

Raven was something of a poet, but then, to list the talents of the extraordinary individual that walked under the name of Raven Roth would be to confine yourself to a work that would take the best part of a life. A thorough education in Azarath makes sure of that for even the most mundane individuals.

Sometimes in meditation verses would suggest themselves to her mind, sliding from the periphery of her consciousness unbidden but not unwelcome. She wrote the best specimens down, but never, quite definitely never, showed them to anyone. Sometimes she regretted the fact that she didn't trust any of her friends with these precious insights into her soul. Perhaps, she thought, being in an open-minded mood, if they erect a memorial when I'm dead they could inscribe one of them.

Though admitting it was impossible Raven found the thought of only opening up once she was safely cremated depressing, so, telling herself that too much emotion was dangerous, she moved her mind on.

After uncounted minutes of deep soul searching Raven was cruelly wrenched from her near trance like state.

The all too familiar special alarm was blaring.

"Slade!" yelled Robin, although nobody required the confirmation. They had been called out by that sound too many times for that.

The team piled down the stair into the garage cum hanger bay where the collection of vehicles employed by the outfit lay at rest. Raven phased through the ceil after the others, having taken a moment to affix her new sabre to her belt. After all, if a few robots were slashed apart no one was going to complain.

They shuffled into the car that was their main means of transportation and Cyborg revved up the engine.

Instead of waiting for the mechanical bridge that could extend to join the tower's island and the shore to finish its expansion Cyborg jumped the final gap over the rolling water.

The car landed and Cyborg pushed it to its limitations as well as his in getting to the scene as fast as possible.

Soon long rows of buildings came into view.

Great, Raven thought, a crime in cube town. Couldn't the designers have thought of something, anything, to prevent this area being swallowed up by the ugly monstrosities that constituted the architecture of the warehouses? Cuboids of rectangular corrugated iron, ugh. Building a beast like that would have constituted a crime back in Azarath.

Was it too much to hope that Slade had come across some rival crime lord and the result of the skirmish would be two extremely high profile arrests for the Titans? Probably.

It became obvious that this was not the case when they got to the scene of the crime.

The robots seemed to acting completely randomly.

Raven watched as one raked its claws across the thin iron that made up the wall nearest to the Titans and took away a fair chunk of metal. Looking through the doors that hung open on its less than completely trustworthy hinges Raven could see the machines firing random laser bursts with no particular purpose.

Raven decided that she didn't have the time. Instead of applying her mind to the situation she marched into the doorway, psychically dismantling the robots idiotic enough to cause mayhem outside the doors.

Robin shouted a line, Raven could guess what it was, that brought her friends running, flying, and in one case, galloping to her side.

They stood there in a line as every robot in the building turned to face them.

Robin flicked out his gilded Tamaranian quarterstaff.

Raven drew her sword.

And the robots charged.

The Titans met the first wave unmoving; Raven swung her sword in two flashing strokes that cleaved three of the constructs neatly in two. Robin smashed one up into the air and drove his staff through the head of another before smashing the first one out of the air onto one of its comrades.

Dust whirled around them, then settled slowly.

Raven knew that was wrong, they should have been mobbed, but instead the robots were standing back against the far wall.

She looked across at Robin, "Do we go forth?"

He nodded.

The robots had one thing on their side, any sane creature would have broken and run at the sight of a charge containing enraged aliens and massive dinosaurs, the robots were too stupid to.

But before the Titans had reached halfway their leader was smashed aside by a figure that could only have come from the roof. The initial impact of the obviously female figure sent the leader flying, he landed painfully but managed to gasp, "You keep going, I can deal with this."

Starfire quite simply did not hear him, there was too much blood pounding in her ears. In the simplistic manner that she fell into when anger overtook her she walked right in front of the woman who had landed gracefully several feet further than Robin and punched her.

The princess's right fist swung upwards, not surrounded by a corona, she was to angry for that, and made contact with her enemy's jaw. Blood spurted from the point of contact, the pressure forcing it into the crisp air. The body of her friend's assailant flew backwards several paces and lay still.

Too surprised by what she had done to capitalise on it Starfire stood in place for several seconds, seemingly frozen, then began to help Robin.

She was smashed to the ground by the woman who swept her feet away then drew two short swords.

Robin managed to regain his balance and bring up his staff to block the first blow. Yet the assassin struck again, and again, moving with an athletic ballet style grace that forced the Titan backwards again and again.

The assassin saw an opening in Robin's defence, and struck.

Raven saw, and her eyes flickered wide.

She took the blow to her own stomach, teleporting instantly and without thinking.

The sword slid into her gut where it was enveloped in a black aura. Raven's head turned slowly, her eyes were glowing with the white heat of a furnace. She swept up a hand and the assassin was sent flying against the far wall.

Raven took a moment to stand up. Robin recognised the signs, the intense white glow from the eyes, the perfectly upright posture, and, when they came, the calmly enunciated tones.

"I am carefully refraining from crushing in your skull without laying a finger on your worthless form. I suggest you give me some reason to continue being as controlled as I am at the moment."

The assassin took a second to think about it, that was almost to long, "I warn y-" began Raven.

"Slade," said the assassin, cutting her of.

"Wise decision," stated Raven, her eyes narrowing and her hand that had been subconsciously creeping upwards falling back to her side.


	9. No Respite

**Author's Note: **my apologies for taking so long to post a sub-standard chapter. It is more of a link between this chapter and the next. However, I could complain about my inadequacies all day, but instead I will ask you to judge the summary for the planned sequel to Templars and Daemons.

**Coraxa Pheonixis  
**

Even Trigon feared Appolyon, he knew the extent of the other daemon's power. Azar knew some of his strength, a knowledge she refused to divulge. Raven Roth had only a blank fearfulness, completely useless when she found herselffaced with the master of Death itself.

**No Respite**

Raven had healed quickly. She had needed something to divert her energy into. So she quickly became whole again, and without, _O' Azar Hailiem Danqué!_ a trace of daemonic tissue. Regeneration on that scale should have seen some part of the newly generated flesh corrupted, but that patently hadn't happened this time.

After a few minutes rest, she should have had at least an hour, Robin had made the executive decision. Slade had to be captured; there would be no respite.

And so, with her energy drained by the strain of regeneration, Raven found herself levitating through the rickety tunnels under the wharfs that Slade was apparently hiding in.

Raven remembered these tunnels in fact. She had dug them, with the traitor at her side. So if these were the earth walls she thought that they were they should reach a massive centre underneath the Tower.

She flew with Starfire at her side reluctantly heaving along the assassin, who was bound up with spare length of Robin's steel cord.

Cyborg ran beneath them, his legs pounding with a continuity that could only be dreamed of by the unaugmented, or to the mechaphobes, the natural.

Robin and Beast Boy managed to keep up, Beast Boy by morphing into some cat or other, and Robin by hoisting himself forward with a gadget of some description whenever he fell behind.

And so they made their way forward, ignorant of what lay ahead, but prepared to fight it whatever the cost.

The reinforced doorways of the control centre came into view, springing from the vanishing point at the end of the tunnel. There were no robotic guards. Robin looked suspiciously at the door, then at the assassin, then once again back to the door.

The doorway exploded inwards and the Titans burst in.

Raven saw that the rival crime lord theory, although perhaps a better description would be hopeful fantasy, had not been quite so farfetched as it had seemed.

The few robots that Slade had not been using as a lure where retreating in around him, surrounded by swarms of other robots of a completely different description. And the machines that the Titans had through a continuous conflict come to know and hate were being butchered, many were lying in little heaps of scrap metal in expanding pools of lubricant.

The Titans turned as one to Robin, relying on someone else's initiative is easier than actually using your own.

He gave the order, and the Titans went, unfortunately the past tense of go is not quite so inspiring as the present.

Raven charged, sword, a streak of bloodied fire, of incarnate conflict, in the low artificial light.

Her comrades with her she began to slice apart the thirty drones that made up Slade's remaining bodyguard.

She became as one with the blade, and lost herself in the precise incisions that the fight became for her. A delicate slash across a crucial wire. A subtle flick and a pipe spills fluid across the floor as the machines falter before the whirling unstoppability.

She saw Slade before her, metal only on the outside, but human within, except in the mind, in the hateful, inhuman mind.

She drew the sabre back above her head, no armour could stop her blow, no survive it.

The cries of her comrades simply did not register upon her as she prepared to strike down like a God in full smite.

Yet she spent to long preparing and a sharp edge of metal cut into the still fresh skin on her abdomen and punch like the iron bar the outstretched arm of Slade virtually became sent her reeling airborne backwards, shocked out of the mindset that would have sent her hacking her way into a bloodbath.

She landed splayed upon the concrete surface, her eyes flickering with the shock then closing with every horrendous appearance of permanence.

The battle effectively ceased. Slade was hit simultaneously by more attacks than the normal human frame could handle. He went down.

The drones that had been attacking him milled around. Robots had no initiative, they could not make decisions, so for the moment, the Titans were safe, at least from being gunned down.

They ran to Raven, and managed to convince themselves that she was fine on the way. Luckily they were right.

The robots came at them seconds after the relief, falling upon them with claws and short ranged weapons that attacked with static electrical discharges.

Cyborg was vulnerable so the other Titans drew the robots away, leaving him to watch over Raven's unconscious form, with its limbs splayed in an insane balletic posture.

He knelt, his right arm whirring into cannon form, and muttered, "Man, you are getting it bad girl, you're getting it bad. Kidnapping, stabbing, now this. Everything's suddenly about you."

As if to prove his point the mob of robots that his friends had led of into the labyrinths of tunnels which had been bored by the vast worm machines suddenly returned, carrying the limp forms of Robin Beast Boy and Starfire.

No one had noticed, but the assassin had found some way of slicing her bonds, probably employing a shard of shrapnel, and had faded away into the darkness and was probably busy escaping from justice.

The robots advanced, charging their stunning weaponry as they came.

Cyborg took up a firing stance and pumped rivers of glowing might into the horde. The ultrasound heaved the machines apart with horrifying efficiency where it made contact. But the machines weren't built for subtlety. They were designed to mob their targets, and that was what they proceeded to do.

Cyborg fought with the ferocity of a wolf surrounded and selling its life for the pack, for the greater whole.

Yet like the analogical wolf, he was struck down stunned.

Three of the mechanical troopers were fitted with flight devices; they took Raven, handling her form with the utmost care. A care that everyone would afford to someone so seemingly peaceful as she was at that moment.

The others placed the other Titans on the hard floor and stood around them, motionless, the only symbol of their alertness the eerie red lights that were an ever-present part of machinery.

The robots took off, boring their way through the rock out into the open, and then carrying Raven's unconscious frame between them skimming over the bay then the concrete skin of the city, and then, finally, alighting.

Raven slept with every outward appearance of peace, but what meaning did appearance have?

Her dreams were troubled, not by any defined sense, but by a looming dread, growing closer, mightier, more defined. It skulked as yet in the periphery of her consciousness, unseen, known only by the shadow of nameless fear that it cast out in her dreaming.

Raven dreamt, unknowing, for three days.

Then, slowly, she awoke.

Determined never to give way to cliché Raven did not wonder, who am I, or indeed where am I? She instead gave her mind over to the thought, who has brought me here?

The unfortunate thing about the cliché in question was the fact that it was completely logical to wonder where one was, especially if the location was unfamiliar. And so Raven found herself pushed down the, where am I, thought path.

She was lying in a large yellow orb, not solid, but somehow separated from the rest of the world. The orb nestled on a stand at one end of a large airy room with high old-fashioned rectangular windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor.

At the other end of the room was a desk covered in miscellaneous clutter, Raven identified a model battleship, a bust of Athena and a stand containing a large fountain pen.

It was morning and golden sunlight was streaming in through the windows, highlighting every speck of dust in the whirling dance that added grace and character to the space. On the floor was a deep maroon carpet; the walls were covered in mahogany panelling. Here and there were a few pictures, mostly landscapes depicting farms or mountains and in one case, a city, or at least its skyline.

Raven lay in the bubble for a time, searching her memory for any recollection of this place, but apart from a slight resemblance to Azar's residences it was completely new.

Her thoughts were broken by the entrance of a man through the doors at the opposite end of the chamber.

He wore a rugby shirt in a dark blue colour that contrasted with his smart trousers. His face might be described as handsome in an old kind of way. A Victorian style moustache stretched across his upper lip and was emphasized by, Raven was almost amused to see, a monocle. The man wore a slight frown and had eyes that seemed to put you on trial when they passed over you. His arms were folded and his head was tilted to one side, his features set in a thoughtful expression and his eyes resting on Raven.

Raven groped for some way to break the silence that seemed to grip them, motionless.

She needn't have bothered. "Good morning miss Roth," said her host with a smile. The man's smile was at best friendly, yet vaguely and ethereally annoying, irritating in some uncertain way. It gave you the feeling of having been somehow outsmarted.

Raven decided to take Azar's advice, or at least utilise the sentiment of one of her long informal lectures, which ranged from the correct application of politeness to the best way to avoid long-term disappointment, to the fundamental desires of the human psyche.

She opted for politeness, "Good morning sir."

"Please Miss Roth, though I may actually be a knight there is no need for formality. Now, allow me to introduce myself," he had advanced slightly and was now subjecting her to the thoughtful expression once again. "I have the dubious fortune of being called Greenwood Scott, snigger if you will, and I have of course heard of you, Raven Roth. Oh yes, I've heard of you."

"Please call me Raven," said Raven, annoyed, "I would like to labour under the delusion that only my friends could know the name Roth." The request was delivered coldly.

"Very well Raven, very well. Now, you must come to breakfast so I can explain myself."

"I'm trapped in a bubble," said Raven shortly raising her eyebrows in a gesture that was part accusation, part query.

"Oh yes, I apologise, but it was the only reliable way of protecting the property. I bought it off a man who called himself The Mechanic, apparently it contains psychic energy very efficiently." So, she held in an inescapable sphere to protect the property had she? Hopefully this Greenwood Scott's apparent tendency to say more than he really should would let her find the real reason.

He led her out of the room, the other end of which had been lined with bookcases containing the works of Jane Austen, and a compilation of the quotations of Churchill among multitudinous other volumes, most with an aging appearance.

She followed her host through wood panelled halls bearing relics from the ages of feudalism and the Industrial Revolution. There were massive pikes hung in what might be called bouquets, crossbows and deer heads, along with a sculpture of a lion swathed in the pelt of one of the creatures themselves.

It gave the appearance of an old castle or family manor, inhabited for generations by lords who could afford to go out shooting birds and the animals of the woodlands. Yet that could not be so. Closer inspection was required.

By now Scott was leading her into a large dining room with a long table easily large enough to seat ten people on each side. Two places were laid in the centre and Raven took a moment to marvel at the sheer array of food that this stranger had purchased, seemingly only to accommodate her. Suffice to say that there was food of all kinds, a variety of which the Agricultural Festivals of Azarath would have been proud to boast. _Would_ have been proud to boast.

Scott sat in the chair on one side of the table and gestured to Raven to take the other. "You will, of course, be wanting to know why you are here."

"It did cross my mind," said Raven coldly with a you don't say expression on her face.

A flash of annoyance flickered on Scott's face, "Very well, Raven. If you wish I shall tell you."

Raven smiled with an obligingness that did admirably well to smother the sarcasm that screamed to escape.

Judgement on this man could be reserved for the moment. And when she pronounced her judgement, she hoped, mostly for her own sake, that it would be favourable.


	10. ReEntry

**Author's Note: **An apology is defintiely in order for taking so long to update the story. iIwill not insult anyone who has note long since grown bored and left with excuses. I hope that this chapter and the next can make up for my failures.**  
**

**Re-entry**

Raven subjected the figure on the opposing side of the table to a gaze that cut through flesh and struck straight to the core. Her eyes narrowed slightly and her head tilted back as her shoulders widened to allow her to lean back slightly in her chair.

"The thing is Raven, you are the only interesting thing in this city, apart from the cathedral, and I believe I have some connection with your past," said the man opposite, a calculating expression on his face.

"That is highly unlikely."

The man smiled, relishing the shock of his next words, "Do not be so sure, Raven. Not everyone who knew Azar went to Azarath." He delivered the comment in a casual manner, but it sliced down to the centre of Ravens mind with an icy blade.

She was shocked that the thought had never occurred to her, that she had never thought that Azar, whom she knew had come from earth, could have left any acquaintances behind.

Scott smirked slightly, then drove on with what he had to say, "I never believed that I would ever see anyone else who knew her again, but now I have."

"How did you find out?" choked Raven through the numbing shock.

"The wonders of the internet Raven, the wonders of the internet. You wouldn't believe what it can tell you." Raven was beginning to be annoyed be the slightly superior style in which he spoke, like a lecturer gradually and measuredly disembowelling the delusions of his students. "Strangely there was also," he paused, "never mind." Raven decided that she didn't want to know, or more precisely that if she did find then she would regret it. "So Raven, I must ask you, how is Azar?"

It was his turn to receive a shock; Raven saw no point in prevaricating, "Dead." Emotion fought to wash into the words, to push its way out of its confinement through her face or her voice. But she said the words blankly, the constriction of her chest the only sign of feeling.

Scott visibly reeled, his brow creasing as if trying to comprehend the meaning of the word. He half muttered unintelligible words, moving and wringing his hands in a physical expression of disbelieving agitation.

The spectacle of the total and instant destruction of a delusion that has served to bring comfort for the best part of a lifetime was painful to watch. Eventually Scott summoned up enough courage to ask the strangled question, "How long?"

"Years now," replied Raven, sorrow and pity mixing in her deep eyes, "I'm sorry." She was.

The man across the table in the room that had suddenly become cold managed to break the flow of sorrow within him to request, "Tell me, how?"

Raven told him, from the story of Azarath to her own birth to the coming of Trigon to the very moment of Azar's death itself.

By the end of the story Scott had succeeded in calming himself down. When Raven related the circumstances of her mentor's death he muttered to pronounced to the world at large, "I should have been there, I should have died at her side." At that moment compassion, one of the emotions whirling chaotically at the apex of her Raven's mind came to the fore and she reached out an arm and patted him on his shoulder.

He lifted his head from his hand, "You were the last person she saw. I hope you realise how much of a blessing that is."

Raven nodded solemnly, oh yes, she knew. She knew better than anyone just how much of a blessing that was.

Scott lifted himself from his chair, his breathing deep but largely controlled. "Please, come with me, I have something that you must see."

Raven raised an eyebrow in her customary fashion and followed his footfalls through the halls of his manor house. The long chambers ran from north to south and their massive French windows faced out to the east, giving a spectacular view of the mountain around which the city was built. You could look across the wide pedestrian clogged road that ran from the summit of the mount down to the waterfront to see the gothic towers of the early colonial cathedral and the gilt frontage of the court building, which had been removed from the estate of the mayor when it was decided that democratically elected rulers should not live in buildings composed mainly of marble and gold leaf.

Her guide turned through one of the doors that emerged from the mahogany panelling of the hall and she followed him into a large room generously furnished and decorated in a regal and old-fashioned manner. Windows on her right looking over a courtyard allowed the pale light of morning that had been so golden but a door away filter into the chamber. There was a real fireplace, like the warm and homely log burning pieces that she had loved in Azarath, built into the wall in front of her.

Scott walked over to it and leant against it with his hand on the mantelpiece. "In that chest there," he said, motioning to a case below the windows, obviously meaning that Raven should open it.

She knelt beside it and lifted the lid open.

Lying inside it on a purple cushion was a book. No, more precisely, a tome.

It was bound in leather, inlaid with tiny amounts of golden wire that formed Azar's symbol when the light caught it in the right way. It was roughly half the size of a dictionary; the sheaves of paper that made up its pages were bound together with black cord.

"What is it?" Raven asked, lifting it reverentially from its bed. Something about the way it exuded knowledge and wisdom.

"Azar's First Treatise on Pacifism and Psychic Ability," stated Scott, "rather a long title, but I am sure that the content is infinitely more interesting."

Raven caught the hint in the wording of the sentence, "You don't actually know?"

"I've read the section regarding pacifism, but Azar forbade me to read the chapters on psychic abilities unless someone from Azarath had read it first."

And to think, thought Raven, that all this knowledge might have been lost if I had not been brought here.

"It seems obvious that you should read it, as it relates to you so deeply."

"Thank you," said Raven in a detached manner, flipping through the first pages, seeing neat ink written text and diagrams.

"May I ask a question," she said, twisting to face her host.

"But of course."

"How did you bring me here? The last thing I remember was being knocked out by Slade," as she said the word her ghost's eyes darkened and his face hardened, "before waking up here."

"Very well Raven," Scott began, "I have lived in this city for around two years. In that time I have witnessed first hand the cruel nature of both the police and the criminals of this city. For the sake of my conscience I had to take justice into my own hands." Raven was about to protest but he raised a hand and continued, "Pray before you call me a hypocrite allow me to explain myself. I am an unknown force, a foreigner who came here and bought a big house, hardly a threat to a well-entrenched crime lord, but I am not harmless, far from it. Seeing as neither yourself and your little group of altruists nor the police forces were making any progress I decided to find a group more likely to have connections with and knowledge of Slade. The "guild" of assassins that I encountered proved to be just what I was looking for. Oh don't worry Raven," he said in response to the horrified look creeping onto her face, "I gave no orders to kill him. However, when the assassin sent to neutralise Slade failed I had to fork out massive sums to hire what could be called a private army of robots to finish the task." He paused for a moment. "Slade has, I understand, been neutralised, seconds after you were stunned apparently. The robots dispatched to perform that task then brought you here."

Raven took a moment to digest the information, and then said, "So you sent the assassin, and the robots?"

"Yes."

"Should I forgive you?" she asked, looking at him earnestly.

"That is your choice."

At last the time had come. The Emissary didn't know how long she had spent mouldering in the psychic cell of one of the numerous prisons in the city. But at last tonight she would be held no longer in this hateful concrete cube.

It had taken far too long for the inspiration to come to her, but now that it had she was ready to overload the wards that prevented the rituals she had prepared form smashing through the dank walls and forming a rubble strewn pathway to freedom.

In execution her plan was simple. She still had her Temple Blade, an ethereal weapon that no amount of psychic warding could remove. With a single word she could summon it to her hand. The blade could not cut through solid substances, but sever the strands that attached souls to their bodies.

Previously it had seemed useless to her. What good could killing the guard who routinely gave her the barest minimum of acceptable nourishment do?

Then it had hit her.

The cell had been built to hold the psychic potential of a single individual, if she could overpower this by simultaneously releasing the power of two people then she could break herself free.

She sat patiently by the door, her legs crossed and her hands on her knees. The Temple had taught her how to wait.

She supposed that it was midday when the guard came in and brought her lunch. She stood as she heard the key clacking in the mechanical lock and the card swiping in the computerised one.

She summoned her Temple Blade and drew back her hand, the incantation that would send power blasting through the symbols she had sketched on the wall in preparation ready on her lips.

The guard stepped through the doorway, not looking towards the prisoner but down at his watch.

The Emissary struck, the ghostly substance of her Temple Blade swiping the life from her quarry's head. The man fell, still fully armoured, as The Emissary shrieked out her spell.

The symbols on the wall burned with more power than the wards built into the cell could handle and blasted the concrete away. The Emissary smirked.

She muttered another incantation and her feet lifted from the ground.

There was no question as to the next course of action, "While she had failed in her duties, a crime punishable by death in the Temple, there could be no disobedience.

Now that she could be assured that the Temple was in fact occupying the same universe as her it could be contacted directly with a minimal number of sacrifices. She would open a portal to the Temple and call through reinforcements to capture the accursed daughter of the Lord Trigon.

She chose a dirty district that obviously had a tiny or defective police complement.

She landed in a deserted side street, fragments of litter and general grime crowding the area between two blocks of flats.

She lay in wait by the entrance for the rest of the day, ensnaring anyone who walked by until by nightfall she had an eight strong crowd of people lying stunned in the alleyway.

She withdrew the chalk that she always carried, etching lines in the murky darkness, chanting as she did so.

The area was prepared, her incantations had been voiced, all that was needed now was power and the trigger.

Having no other weapon she summoned her Temple Blade up again, raising it to bring it swinging in a whirl that would pluck the lives and souls from each of her captives.

She whirled the weapon, its blade flowing in a swooping arc as the trigger incantation burst from her lips.

She felt the power rising, expanding to fill her form and grow on. She tore the fabric of fragile reality with ease delivered her message directly to the mind of the Grandmaster, opening a small, but physical, unlike the mental fracture before it, hole to mark her position. Soon the power faded and she was forced to conquer the hunger to slay more, more to rebuild the ecstasy of nigh omnipotence.

Her training saved her there and the rift into the space of the Temple blossomed suddenly open.

The Emissary cackled to see the foreboding buttresses and towers, but the laugh warped quickly into a strangled screaming shriek.

It was not column of grey robed Temple warriors that was moving out of the tear.

The Emissary raised her voice in prayer to her blasphemous deity, but for please went unanswered. She glanced up again and screamed her final scream.


	11. Overlord

_Voila. Sans introduction._**  
**

**Overlord**

The Grandmaster had received the pleas of his once favoured Emissary with inexorable scorn.

Failure was a crime. It was that simple. In the end, what was failure but an expression of ignorance? There was always a way. If you do not know it, you fail. If you fail, then you do not know it. Needles to say, it disgusted him.

He had made up his mind quickly as was his fashion. He ignored the desperate cries for reinforcements, the begging for relief from a task that was simplicity in its very essence.

He had immediately set Acolytes to move the new acquisition into position, the fluctuations in time caused by the concentration of potent sorcerous energy allowing this task to be completed before the Emissary opened her portal.

The Grandmaster almost smiled as the construction began its slow descent into the Emissary's metaphorical grave. However, the mortification layering his mind prevented that. He felt cruelly betrayed, his valuable trust had been placed in the servant he was now condemning. The mistake was unforgivable. The phrase was, he believed, "If you want something to be done right you have to do it yourself." He completed in that moment the total embrace of the maxim.

He wrenched his mind back to the matter in hand; eight slaves were arrayed before him, each one held on a chain by a High Priest.

The sixteen men hovered down to the ground of the strange city. Their Grandmaster followed them on a floating pulpit of grotesquely carved stone. He was followed by another, an Acolyte, his face covered be a sacrificial mask.

The buildings seemed to be formed of small rectangular blocks of stone, sometimes faced with something, sometimes left bare. They each bore a thin covering of dirt, and there was no architecture to speak of. The buildings were functional boxes. The hyaline overhead was filled with the glory of noon, clouds were high and few. The air was cold enough to bite.

He quickly deduced that the area he was standing in was sunk in poverty, or bordering on it.

But now the High Priests were coming forwards, forming in circular formation around the Acolyte.

Each drew an obsidian dagger inlaid with the cipher of the Temple and the Lord Trigon. The Grandmaster watched in fascination as the blades raised, the barbs on their lengths catching light and sending it shining to and fro. His tongue flickered over his lips as the blades ceased their rise and the High Priests drew the heads of their prisoners level with their own.

The prisoners were terrified, but not in some animal way. They knew what was happening, they had witnessed it before. They knew the entity that headed the Temple. Indeed the Grandmaster believed that they had formed the centre of the society that the lord had destroyed not long prior to the discovery of the daughter here.

But that was of no matter, all importance here was attached to the ritual. The ritual must succeed; nothing could be allowed to prevent it. Not that there was the slightest possibility of prevention occurring.

The Masterful Plan was complete, today was the day, as the red sun would fall, and the demon stars would rise, Temple would reign supreme, and then, then… perfection.

He snapped his fingers.

Eight sacrificial daggers plunged down. Time gathered itself around to watch the blades falling in suspended animation. The tips pierced skin simultaneously, none of the victims convulsed in the slightest, putting their energy into fighting the magic potential rising in the moment. But still it was not done. The barbed black blades sunk further as blood began to well up in the wounds then rush out in swelling streams as the eight knives sunk towards eight beating hearts.

The metal of the knives met the soft flesh of the living hearts.

And eight corpses exploded with magic energy, their forms filled with a new, different and unholy brand of life. Bands of power exploded forth, setting the air alight. The noise was thunderous, as if the foundations of existence were trembling. The light shone high into the air, a nexus of brilliance that spoke of the majesty of the doom being unfurled, the greatness of the rite being performed.

The sacrificial Acolyte stood at the centre of the maelstrom as the High Priests chanted sonorous, sending their incantations to bind the primal force into usable form. The intonations rose, striving against the power of the force the chanting devotees were attempting to master. The Grandmaster felt the semi sentience that was the sorcery lapsing into indecision. Then he felt its native half intelligence being destroyed and replaced with the will of the High Priests.

The Acolyte raised his arms, the inferno curling to writhe around him, no longer half wild. The robed priests around shifted to a new chant, their voice raising and falling in an unearthly rhythm to which the Acolyte writhed, strands of the mighty sorcery dissolving into his form.

The man's stature swelled improbably as more magic was absorbed, his skin stretching as the mass within him grew.

The blasphemous intonation ended abruptly.

The Acolyte exploded.

His skin burst open, golden light shining as to blind from within. In the light a figure was growing. The body that had once been a Temple Acolyte expanded impossibly into something towering and lumbering.

The form was bestial, akin to a Minotaur. Shags of fur hung form it, matted with blood and vile fluids of unexplored origin. The hands were powerful and mighty, fingers that could enfold a tree with ease. Upon the wild head were four eyes glowing with the obscene malice fuelling the hideous creature. The monster's skin was brazen, pockmarked and gnarled, and around its head was a crown of horns that grew clustered and twisted together.

The thing rose from its crouch, lifting itself from its knuckles with a flexing of massive muscles, spreading wide its arms and unleashing its barbarous claw to test its bestial strength against the objects around it. Without deigning to shift its gaze the creature lifted a fist, then brought it crashing heavily down upon a house that collapsed into a prodigious amount of wreckage and dust. Smoke rose in great clouds as individual objects caught fire, the flames quickly coming together into a great inferno.

The Grandmaster stood in involuntary awe at the presence of the thing he had made his deity. The Lord Trigon.

Raven saw Scott consider the question she had posed to him, watching his discomfort with a practiced eye. Azar had taught her most of the signs, indeed to an eye with and empath behind it they were fairly obvious, and years tracking down criminals without the dim wits that told them that wreckage and mayhem were not, in fact, easy clues for police or other justice preserving forces to follow had refined her skill.

Yet before the man could answer something caught her eye in the glass of the elegant windows.

Her mind scrabbled for words to shape the horrifying thought forming in her mind. After a stunned minute the coarse thought, "Great Azar, there's a hole in the sky!" was fully formed in English.

Scott saw it two, staring out of the window in morbid fascination as a massive object descended from the rift with deceptive lethargy. Raven recognised the smooth fluid shapes of the construction, the concealed arcane machineries that were the Cannon Batteries, the exposed armouries.

The Tamaranian fortress crashed to the ground and a haze of destruction was thrown up. A wall of sound followed the sight, a dull roaring, melodies of devastation interlaced within the screaming whole, combining into a wave that swept out in all directions from its origin.

Raven watched in morbid fascination as robed figures began to descend from the widening slit in the heavens, but not for long.

After a second Raven reigning in her dangerously wondering mind, forcing it to accept and act upon the situation.

Stating, "We are not finished, come with me," she grasped Scott with psychic energies, and opening the windows with the same ethereal force.

Riding a wave of energy of her own creating she swept forth from the window, soaring out over the City, with infinite grace.

She hovered aquiline over the wreckage seeing robed figures similar to those that she had fought in the airless space above Tamaran.

There were eighteen, eight of which, she realised with a horrible jolt of emotion that fried a passing crow, she recognised.

The Eight Mages that had formed the Centre of the Council of the Metrionomicon, she saw them now, nigh unrecognisable in the tattered rags that clung to their equally tattered bodies. Raven put their names to their worn and hollowed faces, the Lord Commodus, the Lord Pertinax, the Lord Didius, the Lord Caracalla, the Lord Elagabalus, the Lord Severus, the Lord Septimius, the Lord Diocletian.

Raven watched with a sickening, but necessary, dispassionate air as the sacrificial daggers did their work, but when the body of the sacrificial Acolyte exploded out wards she fell from the air, stunned.

Mechanical arms stretched out to pluck her limp form from the air just prior to it being dashed into oblivion on the concrete. The body of Scott, for whom the experience of suddenly falling out of a sky which according to reason you should not have been inhabiting anyway was too much, was caught in the great apelike arms of a green gorilla.

Cyborg laid Raven's body on a tiny patch of grass at the edge of the pavement running along the side of the roads on which he stood. "Beast Boy!" shouted Cyborg through the smoke, the huge body of the gorilla clarified and then came fully into view, placing Scott a distance away from Raven and morphing into human form.

Cyborg indicated Scott with his finger, "Who's that dude?"

"No idea, but he was with her in the sky." Cyborg and Beast Boy shrugged in unrehearsed unison.

Starfire landed gracefully, her knees bending ever so slightly as her superhuman Tamaranian physique absorbed the jolting of the impact of her massive purple boots.

"Friend Raven!" she exclaimed, seeing the girl lying, her head lolling slightly, in Cyborg's arms, It's How is she done? isn't it?"

"How's she _doing_ actually, and the answer ain't great," said Cyborg in reply.

"What are we going to do?" requested Starfire, looking at the man-machine with worry widening her massive green eyes.

As if waiting for that line to cue his entry Robin swept into the scene on a length of metal cord.

"Raven OK?" he asked briskly.

"She'll be fine, hopefully. What're we up against?"

"I couldn't see, but whatever it is we'll beat it."


	12. Inexorable

**Author's Note: **Unreserved apologies for the vast delay, my literary time has been devoted to a vast science fiction work, if you have brought yourself to bve patient, my sincere thanks, if not, well, its understandable.

**Inexorable**

Revealing the cannon concealed within his right arm, Cyborg advanced forwards into the embrace of the dust cloud. Out to his right Robin was circling into the smoke, with Beast Boy completing the pincer formation from the left. Hovering above the ever-expanding sheets of shattered debris was Starfire. At a signal from her communicator, she dived into the dust and was swiftly enfolded.

Cyborg prowled slowly along the road, swinging his cannon in wide protracted arcs from side to side, and reacting with superhuman speed to point it directly at the source of any suspicious sound.

He had advanced over fifty meters before the frantic tearing sounds of combat came to his enhanced ears.

Circuitry pinpointed the sound to a bearing to his right. He speeded up his pace, still using the muzzle of his cannon to guide his way, and activating a lamp that slid seamlessly from within its barrel.

The thin beams of light failed to penetrate the murk floating upon the air. Cyborg cursed quietly and proceeded. He was now off the road, in amongst buildings crushed by some force of incredible magnitude. Cautious of an ambush he sent three beams of blue light blasting away before him, hoping to flush out any potential ambushers. Nothing jumped from behind the ruined walls, and Cyborg continued to move forward through the cloud.

The sounds of combat were more immediate now, and encouraged him more and more to simply throw caution to the winds and charge.

He strained his ears, both biological and mechanical, to try to identify some patterns in the sound.

Suddenly, from behind him there was a noise. He spun on the heel of his right foot, dropping defensively to his left knee and firing a blast from his cannon at the source of the sound.

A crow fell from the air, its feathers fried away to reveal its repulsive burnt body. The stench of fried flesh rose from the bird in lapping waves.

Cyborg resisted the urge to kick the carcass savagely away and rose slowly to his feet, his caution restored.

Robin dodged another bolt of golden lightning hurled in Olympian style at him from the hands of the Lord Trigon. He tossed a bomb towards the daemon in counterattack and projected a piton cord in the direction of the buildings behind him which, unlike the unfortunate constructions that he had already retreated through, were largely intact.

The cord retracted into its launcher, whisking Robin away and narrowly saving him from being crushed under a blow from a fist twice the size of his entire body. Said fist smashed a meter deep crater into the road on impact. Sailing backwards, Robin breathed a sigh of silent relief.

But the respite ended quickly, as respite is often wont to, the roaring form of the daemon overlord was clarifying out of the dust.

Robin braced himself against the wall, extending his new Tamaranian staff and whirling it experimentally.

Trigon rushed forward bellowing, hurling a ball of lightning and lifting his leg to crush Robin underfoot when he dodged.

Robin burst forwards off the wall, extending his legs and sailing through the air so that only the hem of his cape was singed by the blast of inhuman power streaking towards him.

He raced along the daemons leg, hacking with the staff, and speeding himself forwards with it in the same motions. Where the metal came into contact with ethereal daemonic flesh Trigon burned.

The daemon was enraged, a golden inferno rippled across his skin, shielding him for a moment as the scorch marks left by the staff healed with unbelievable speed. Robin leapt away but seconds before the fire reached him and it sucked hungrily at his boots as he tumbled backwards through the air.

Robin's feet flipped over his head and met the ground first, skidding against the momentum of his move. He dug the point of his staff into the tarmac and vaulted to his left. He bent his knees from the impact and was running in a massive arc as soon as his feet met the ground. From behind him came the sizzling sound of the lightning striking the road along which he was now running.

A green bat, small and unassuming. It flaps its flesh wings and stretches its jaws wide, emitting a sound too high to be audible. For a moment it falls into indecision, bobbing first left, then right, then left again. Seconds pass as it makes up its mind, and it propels itself to the right with an energetic brandishing of it wings.

Beast Boy looked around with his ears, pinpointing the sounds that made up his vision with powerful accuracy. From a long way off to the right came sounds of tumultuous destruction. Collapsing walls and gutted buildings. But in front of him, towards the centre of the dust could, was where the truly worrying sounds came from. The noise of uncountable feet tramping in unison, of a horde, nay an army, came on the wind from that direction. So it was not without reluctance that he flew straight towards it.

A good distance from the marching soldiers he alighted, shifting from as if his skin was as flexible as water, into a massive creature of green scales and teeth, large, sharp, lethal teeth. He stood in a half crouching birdlike stance, hugely muscled legs bent at the knee, tiny useless arms tucked into the chest, and tail extended rigid behind. His back was horizontal, leaving his reptilian predator's head low, its nostrils slowly dilating to sniff the air.

Then suddenly he charged like the animal whose form he had assumed.

The Templar Acolyte soldiery didn't know how to respond to the crashing of this prehistoric beast into their unprepared front ranks. It came relentlessly, kicking and biting and lashing out with its meters long rigid tail.

An Acolyte in the third rank dived to one side as the creatures foot swept inexorably through three of his comrades he lifted his wand and depressed the catch sending a burst of sorcery rolling towards the monster. To his horror it shrugged of the beam as if he were spraying it with water.

The wands were a new Technomancer innovation, taking the from poles roughly a meter long and thin enough to rest comfortably in the hand, with grips and firing catches at one end. They greatly improved efficiency. Now, instead of having to tame the sorcery every time you wished to attack, you simply took from a large reserve of already controlled power.

The Acolyte ducked as the thing's tail swept over his head. The monster was shrieking in pain, one of the shots from a Wand had struck it square in the face, splashing out over its ugly muzzle and sinking into its eyes. The thing lowered its head and roared. The Acolyte could feel the air shaking itself, and the throat of the creature throbbing in time with the sound. Seeing a chance he hefted his wand and took aim, blasting a beam into the back of the animal's throat.

The howling of the beast suddenly took on a different quality instead of anger; there was pain, and a request for assistance. To the mounting dismay of the Acolyte, that assistance was barely seconds in coming.

Starfire heard the scream, homing in on it and charging bolts of energy around her fists, her eyes widened as it changed from a roar of rage to a shriek of pain.

With a cry of her own she dived with the grace of a swan into the fray.

Wait, these wretches were of the same sort as those who attacked Tamaran. So now you are hear you vile scum, screamed her mind, for that you die!

Gathering destruction around herself like a hurricane Starfire struck forth. A Princess of the House Royal is as an embodiment of the Tamaranian Gods: equally mighty, equally destructive. Waves of soldiers broke against her and were thrown sailing. Nothing penetrated the virtual wall of whirling fists and crowning energy. She seemed to have grown the ten arms of the War God.

The Acolyte dived to the ground behind a low wall and muttered a blasphemous prayer of thanks that the fireball girl had passed him by. He risked peering over the wall. Immediately his head drew back as another soldier slammed into the wall with such force that most of his bones must have been broken. Not least his neck, it was pointing in very much the wrong direction, lolling back over the wall while his body slumped dead in front of it.

The Acolyte grabbed his comrade's wand, placing it next to his own in his hand.

Again, he ventured to raise his head above the wall. He was now behind both the beast and the fireball, perfect.

He raised the cylinder of one of the wands and took careful aim, targeting the back of the fireball girl; from behind she didn't quite seem so frighteningly ferocious.

He fired.

A searing bolt of golden lightning struck the road in front of Cyborg. The surface bubbled; sucking ravenously at his feet as he pounded after the ghostlike figure of Robin ahead of him, pursued inexorably by the roaring might of the Lord Trigon.

He called out, coughing against choking dust. Robin swung around, dropping into a cautious stance ready to leap away at less than a moment's notice. He replied, but the sound was lost like a drop in the ocean that was the Lord Trigon roaring in triumph.

Cyborg's neck snapped round, the daemon lord was standing over him, waves of hatred descending golden from his eyes to smite his half mechanical from into the ground and dissolve his soul in scourging agony.

He leapt away, a little too late, the bottom half of one of his mechanical legs was fried off completely. Augmented nerves shut down completely, blanking out the pain and creating a surreal feeling of invincibility. His mouth was open in preparation for a scream of pain, which never materialised. Instead what came was a cry of rage, he hefted his cannon arm, propping it on the opposing limb, and pointing it directly into the vicious sneering face of the daemon towering over him.

The blue beam of dancing light smashed into the face of the abomination full on. The Lord Trigon staggered, actually staggered backwards.

Robin was beside him, supporting him and letting them limp away from the screams of the daemon.

It was painful, Raven had discovered, to sit on the edge of a battlefield. For her to fight, regaining consciousness was not going to be enough, she would have to regain strength as well. It was a pity then, that all the sorcery for miles was being absorbed into that screening orb of dust, which as she had deduced by now, was magically sustained.

All she could do was pace, and listen to Scott's endless stream of anecdotes regarding Azar and her early visions. Azar obviously had been refining her ideals for quite some time before Raven was introduced to them, Scott's stories and comments and ruminations turned out to be extremely enlightening, but unfortunately her mind had no room to focus, emotion clustered on all sides and she had to direct disproportionate energy into forcing them back into place.

"She spoke about daemons once you know," said Scott absently.

Raven's scything legs halted mid-pace, and her head whipped around so quickly that the two actions combined threw her momentarily of balance.

"What?" A coldly voiced demand.

"Azar talked about daemons, in fact one summer she was obsessive about them and spent her time doing nought but writing and ranting. By the end of the third month of it we'd all had quite enough of her grand theory."

Who were we? wondered a stray philosophical corner of her mentality, which she quickly rounded up and controlled.

"Tell me." Another demand.

"Well, it was very convoluted, but at the bottom of it all was a kind of dual world, surrounded by magic. Daemons come from the other one, and need some kind of link to appear in our world," he frowned and looked far away trying to remember, "at least I believe that was the essence of it."

"Raven?" This was asked hesitantly.

Then again, more urgently, "Raven!"

But again, Raven had fainted dead to the ground, as if her life was trying to cram the number of times she would ever faint into as short a time span as possible.


	13. From Pawn to Queen

**Author's Note: **To all my benevolent and praiseworthy readers (as well as those other ones that fail to review) I thank you for your patience, these next chapters shall bring this story to completion, and I am grateful that anyone has considered it to be worth their time to read and review. I apologise for my laxity in failing to post these sooner, and hope that you might find grace to forgive me. To those faithful left then, read on.

**From Pawn to Queen**

A Monologue from the Mind.

Is it not obvious Raven? You have guessed at this, a portal needs not prophesy to function. A great enough sorcery, a great enough sacrifice, and you become the slave to a greater will once again. A will so inexorable that you had no choice but to give in before.

But do not lament, there is hope for you yet!

Trigon needs you, and while you endure you have one advantage.

Knowledge is power, Raven Roth. What a blessing this monocled foreigner has turned out to be.

Once again, we have consciousness.

Raven pushed herself up, eyes burning with cold light.

"Ah, Raven! Thank God you're-"

"Where is my sword." It was a demand, not a question.

"My house, my study. Miss Ro- Raven, are you quite sure you-"

"I will send you. Fetch it, when you have it, I shall return you."

"Raven-"

She raised her hand, and he was gone.

And then he was returned, sabre in hand.

Raven snatched the blade from him, touching its wincingly cold edge to her throat.

"Now, mon cher papa, bow before your insignificant pawn."

"Trigon!" howled Raven, "Listen to me!"

She stood defiantly, facing into the wall of clouding dust, blade to her own throat, hood down, voice challenging.

The dust sphere gave nothing away, but after a handful of seconds Raven continued.

"I have your attention, and already you are staring into my mind. Shall I tell you what you shall find there?" she paused, a curl to her lips, half ecstatic smile, half disdainful sneer.

"Determination, oh dear father of mine, determination that you shall fail. Hah! See your little daughter, see how she is not content to remain a pawn. I've come to the other side of the board Trigon, and you shall recognise me as a Queen.

Why? Why? Because if you do not I shall see myself die before I shall se your dominion come about again. And you can't exist without me.

More than a portal, I am your lifeline! If I die, you fall, and the whole operation build under you is crushed as you come crashing down on top of it! You know this, and now I know it too! Knowledge is power Trigon! Azar avenges herself from beyond the grave!"

The dust wall gave nothing away. It simply swirled. Ravens posture remained the same, facing up to it, awaiting a reply with determination and defiance.

Then it came, a booming, roaring voice, suddenly everywhere at once, so that it seemed to surround you very close by.

"Very well, Queen. Let us call it not check, but Stalemate. For, my little girl, I hold your Kings, all four of them."

"Three is more traditional," quipped Scott quietly, before a glance from Raven silenced him. Four Kings, four kings, what four kings? Wait, four kings.

"You will not harm my friends." She stated, eyes ablaze with fury as she rose slowly into the air. The sword was still touched to her throat.

"They shall come to no more harm than I Raven, but I shall hold them as assurance none the less," stated Trigon, safely back to assuming the favoured role of playful tormentor.

Raven opened her mouth, then closed, gnashing her fangs in frustration. "Damn you," it was a whisper but it resonated for all to hear.

"Damnation serves me Raven, and death is my slave."

Raven slowly returned to the ground.

The Grandmaster was suffering the excruciating feeling of being haplessly unable to alter events. Threats and taunts rolled between his daemonic master and his infernal daughter, quite ignoring the Templars on the ground, or the destruction they could wreak. Whatever it was that was said about the best-laid plans, it proved to be infuriatingly true. He was determined not to stand for it.

He called his servants to him, knights and bishops, the commanders of the acolyte soldiery and their fanatic priestly inspirations.

"We shall begin as planned, the subjugation of this world shall be the finest work of the Temple. As the Lord Trigon is to busy with his bastard brat to act, we shall do so in his stead. Go to your men, the reaping of the first line of defence shall begin."

The knights cheered, the bishops offered blasphemous prayers and they both dispersed in all directions to the units of acolytes under their pious command.

Not seconds later the Grandmaster greeted the ululating sound of approaching sirens with a predatory grimace. Now, about that brat.

Commissioner Grahamson was not having the best day ever.

In fact, today was quite the opposite.

Arriving late to work for the first time in ten years of law enforcement did not make the best start to a day. However, this, and everything else, paled into insignificance when faced with the thought: Oh God there's a hole in the sky!

And even that seemed trivial when the vast ruby rose fell through it and crushed half a district.

The cars sped towards the dust cloud and the crash sight. Grahamson, who had spilt cheap coffee over himself when he caught sight of the hole opening in the sky, was simultaneously attempting to remove liquid from his suit with a dying paper towel and answer all the calls on the radio set in the back seat of one of them. Where were superheroes when you actually needed them?

"Sir, we're approaching the crash site," reported the driver.

The Commissioner spared the enveloping smokescreen a glance. It was impressive in a way, ominous almost.

"Very good."

The static on the radio cut out, the voice on the other end was cold and grey. "This is Commander Chen of the Prison Guards, we are preparing to take charge of this operation, Commissioner Grahamson will coordinate riot police movements as we instruct. Chen out." Great, thought Grahamson, the Prison Guards. If there was one group he detested more than the Titans it was them. The way they came in when it suited them and lorded it over them all with their bloody Special Weapons And Techniques made him burn with black fury. Was there no room in the city for honest policemen? Obviously not. Still, at least he would be able to, "coordinate riot police movements." How pleasant of the guards to grant him that privilege.

The Police vehicles screeched to several separate halts, surrounding the smokescreen, which still managed to persist.

Prison guards spilled from five separate armoured vans, hefting their energy guns and checking the systems on the silvery suits and visored helmets.

The column of Acolyte soldiers was nearing the edge of the concealing dust cloud, its new leader feeling confidant that nothing outside would match the terror of the beast creature and the fireball girl that were now heaped at the feet of the Lord Trigon. At most they would have to combat superficial resistance. The edge of the cloud was fast approaching, he readied his wand, signalling to his Acolyte comrades to do the same.

They were almost at the edge, the column fanned out, prepared itself one final time… and struck.

Commander Chen saw the enemy break cover in a hail of blasts. He grunted into the communication system to, "Return fire immediately," before proceeding to obey himself and take aim, selecting a robed figure and blasting away at it until it dropped.

All along the perimeter pickets Prison Guards in their psychically resistant armour were faring well enough, able to take a single glancing hit without their souls being fried, but the riot police, armoured only physically and using nought but projectile weapons were doing decidedly worse.

Commander Chen half saw a line of riot policemen fall behind their Perspex shields as if a scythe had been swept through them. An image of the grim reaper appeared fleetingly in his mind before he chased it away and continued to fight.

A group of enemies was clustered behind a barrier to his right. Ducking away from enemy fire and before rising again to open up with their own weapons. He stepped from behind his own fragment of cover to strafe them with fire before dodging back again as the ground where he had been standing was turned into a network of craters. He called out to one of his comrades on the right, who was firing on robed soldiers advancing down the centre of a street into a densely packed phalanx of riot policemen.

The Guard ran to crouch behind the same the same burnt out car as his leader, and they alternate standing to fire off a few shots before the fusillade from reacting enemies could come their way.

Policemen were falling back, (Who could blame them? It was that or die) and Guards were becoming increasingly isolated in their defensive positions.

Chen called all of the Guards in his area to him and ordered an attack.

The Acolyte soldier saw all of the silver figures break cover, crouching against the wall of a gutted building he watched them change tactics and press a counterattack.

They had safely passed him by, and many of his comrades, caught off guard, were retreating. He lifted his wand to his shoulder, and methodically began shooting the men in their backs. It had worked for the other two, it would work for these fighters as well.

Commander Chen felt a bolt of energy shoot past his shoulder. He noticed just in time that it had come not from the horde in front, but from behind.

He dropped and turned, spraying energy bolts in a wide arc as another bolt shot harmless over his helmet. There! Against a wall, there was his assailant. He levelled his own weapon and sent three shots towards him. How do you like that? Shooting men in their backs eh? Coward!

The acolyte had time to see the shots coming at him before they hit, but only just. It didn't really matter after they hit. Nothing really mattered after they hit.

Chen ducked behind a bench, and continued his advance.

The Grandmaster was being forced to suffer another new experience. Nervousness was alien to him, but nonetheless it piled onto hiss chest as he reached the edge of the dust and stepped out.

He recognised her immediately. Cowl, cloak, belt, and of course that… thing in her forehead were all just as they were before. He doubted that the experiences they had shared would allow Raven Roth to so easily identify him. But what if they did…

Raven turned at the sound of footsteps. Black robes, a deepening cowl, and a face, a face that she recognised…

Her eyes widened and her whole body lurched.

No!

In Azar's name no!


	14. Reunion

**Reunion**

"Raven, you remember me."

She choked off three replies, and then managed to gasp, "Do you think I would forget."

The Grandmaster smiled. That much was not likely, but these circumstances were not remotely similar to when he and she had last seen each other.

Actually, considering their very last meeting, and not the vast majority of time they had spent together, they were almost exactly the same.

"Do you think now that I will forgive," the empath grated, staring into the Grandmaster's shrouded face.

For a moment the Grandmaster's voice held no malice, no hatred, "No, I don't expect that."

"Wise too," said Raven, regaining a little of her appealing acidity.

Unable to think of anything more to say the Grandmaster simply stood, hands limp at his sides.

Raven was his mirror, her posture was the same hapless semi-slump. But her eyes… her eyes were quite firmly the opposite of his.

Scott came up behind her from whatever task he had been pursuing, screwing his monocle into his eye. He looked up to see the Grandmaster and his jaw dropped.

"My God, Eth-"

"Don't say it." The command was hissed.

Scott was left standing as blank and mute as the other two.

Commander Chen watched as another Prison Guard was struck by one of the weapons of the enemy, at the close range the stuff splashed all over him, cutting off his nascent scream. Unthinking he hefted his own gun and the shot the soldier who had killed the Guard in the cowl. The Prison Guards in Chen's area had lost roughly half their number, with the majority going down as the fighting become close and bloody on the dark side of the dust wall. The enemy, from what he could see, had lost roughly the same percentage of their force. A much higher number of men, but they seemed to be largely oblivious.

The point of one of the guns that the robed fighters wielded came out of the darkness at him, followed by a cowl. The commander grabbed the tip of the barrel in his left hand, ducked under it and thrust up with his shoulder. The material of the gun splintered and split, snapping as Chen swung the butt of his own weapon round to impact unpleasantly with the hooded skull of his adversary. The man went down. Chen consulted the infrared display on his visor and picked another target, loosing off a shot into the gloom and running after it to ensure that its target was dead.

While the majority of their number had been lost here, it was in the blind, hectic, close quarter brawl that was developing that the Prison Guards excelled. Their infrared vision gave them the distinct advantage of being able to see opponents more than a few feet away, and their targeters ensured nigh fatal hits every time.

Chen had scaled a section of wrecked wall to reach a balcony that remained almost intact, and was now providing covering fire for his comrades as they continued in their advance. The casualties on the enemy side were mounting by the minute, but they seemed to be getting no fewer. In fact, there were more every minute. He lifted his gaze from the fighting happening below him to see a constant column of reinforcements. Special Weapons And Techniques or no, the Prison Guards would be swamped. He prepared to call a general retreat, activating his commlink.

"Enemies of the Temple," the voice was not Chen's, the Commander realised that he hadn't spoken at all, the voice in his head belonged to one of his enemies.

"Enemies of the Temple, your fight is futile. Sorceries are prepared. I have but to give the word and a thousand slaves shall die so that your souls may provide some amusement for the Lord Trigon. Honour however dictates I must offer the hope of resistance in single combat. Let your leader come forth, he shall see the power of a Knight of the Temple."

Our leader, thought Chen. Hell, that's me! Single combat with a madman, what a day this shall be to recall.

He turned on his PA.

"I am Commander Chen of the Prison Guards. I am coming forth."

The adversaries, these temple people, (though personally Chen preferred the private nickname "robies") were forming a great wide circle. In the middle stood one man.

He headed towards the circle, or the arena it was swiftly becoming, and deactivated the infrared. The circle was entirely free of dust, hinting that whoever they were the robies were controlling the cloud. Hiding something.

Signalling to his men to be ready to strike should he die, Chen barged through the crowd.

From the inside the arena seemed vast, desolate. Across the impossible distance of its diameter was his adversary.

He looked at the man who had called himself a Knight of the Temple. The word juggernaut came to mind.

The figure was tall, unnaturally so, and wore armour that seemed to be more spikes that plate. The helm was tall, plumed in bloody rags of defeated foes, with but the thinnest T shaped slit to allow the monster being to see. In one hand was a sword. And what a sword! Long and triangular, with teeth jutting jagged from its length, it seemed to glow with an arcane light, and was a deep, jet, black.

Chen had to break off his examination of his opponent at the sword, for said implement of doom was now raised above his head and came rapidly closer as the man charged.

Training took over, he dropped into the crouching firing stance and pumped away with the trigger. Searing light played about the godly form bearing down on him, who now seemed even taller, and in one instance even managed to dent on of the armour plates.

The Knight came through the firestorm unscathed, unslowed, but perhaps marginally less spiky.

He roared, a primal noise of anger and excitement of a deadly, wrathful kind. The dread blade swung down.

Chen's eyes widened. With the mad creativity of the doomed the Commander dived headlong, gun blazing, between the legs of his adversary. He landed roughly on his back as the sword met the ground between his own legs, far too close for comfort.

Half crawling, half scrambling, Chen managed to put a fair distance between himself and the Knight before the latter managed to remove his blade from the ground, which had split into lightning bolt cracks at the weapons impact. Chen was unenthusiastic about his prospects should such a thing happen to him. He wasn't a Harry Potter after all.

Pointing his blade like a lance, to prevent it from being stuck in the ground again, Chen's opponent charged again.

The blade came up fast to his right, Chen sidestepped, putting a shot into the Knights breastplate at point blank range.

The Commander's foe staggered backwards, arms splaying wide. But the stagger was a deception, and one of the arms, previously moving out, was now moving back in to smite Chen's head with its spike ringed gauntlet. The sword lay forgotten on the ground some feet away

Noticing the blow just in time, Chen seized both ends of his gun, and held it up to take the impact of the fist.

The weapon split, and began to leak acidic fuel. Seizing this as his best and only opportunity Chen thrust the broken barrel into the slit of Knight's helm, letting the acid spray into his face.

The Knight screamed. The sound was horrible, inhuman and inhumane, twisted and stifled sickeningly as the acid dissolved mouth and throat.

In that moment Chen realised that he had won.

Raven broke the silence. "I have mourned for your death, as I mourned for the death of everyone else on Azarath. One thing I am certain of is that the man I knew is dead. Whoever you are, it is not the person I once knew. You are Ethan Scott in body alone."

"Ethan," spoke Greenwood Scott, "Ethan Scott?"

Oh, thought Raven, oh dear…


	15. Yours Is Great Disgrace

**Yours is Great Disgrace**

Survival, no, more than that, victory! Commander Chen of the Prison Guards gave the air a good punch, surreptitiously of course, it wouldn't do to have a whole host of deadly enemies see you celebrating the death of their leader at your hands. That sort of thing rarely turns out well for the side that has been doing the celebrating.

A figure had detached from the encirclement and was approaching Chen. He looked for all the world like some depraved and opulent pope fallen to sin, not the most politically correct image, thought Chen. There was a mitre-like construction perched on his head, and in his hand something approaching a crosier cum polearm. The robes the dark priest wore were hung over him in jewelled embroidered waves. He was spreading his arms wide, and though they began at shoulder height his cuffs reached almost to the ground.

Chen didn't care for the situation. Being embraced by a madman, especially a madman aligned to a power prepared to sacrifice a thousand slaves simply to smite a comparative handful of Prison Guards had never featured high on his list of priorities.

Feeling that what he was about to might be called shameful Chen activated his PA.

"Terribly sorry," he broadcast.

Ethan Scott. Raven had mourned for his passing all right, mourned for it more than any other's, save Azar.

He had always been a good friend, her best in fact. She had maintained a small portrait of him, in full meditative gown, on her desk, next to the small picture of Azar that had become something of an icon, and the locket containing the hair of her dear, dead, mother.

Perfectionism was his vice, it had paled next to half-daemonhood, but it was always accompanied by an unpleasant selfishness stemming from the belief that perfection was the universe's most worthy goal, and therefore what you were doing was less important.

That small piece, arrogance, selfishness, the will to be perfect without thought for others, had become the Grandmaster of the Temple. The rest had died.

"How did you survive?" It was a good question, even Azar had perished, for a certain value of perished, and Trigon was not wont to spare mere mortals.

"In the only way I could, I pledged myself to Trigon."

Raven looked down and sighed, she had known of course, she could sense it, but hope, even foolish hope, is oft a most attractive alternative to devastation.

"Do not lament Raven, I have made great leaps, I learned all I could under Azar, it was inevitable that I should go to Trigon eventually. There are rumours Raven, rumours of a third, a companion to Trigon and Azar, I have heard tell of a Lucifer, perhaps when my contract with Trigon is complete, I shall turn to him. Maybe then the great goal shall be within my grasp. Think of it, perfection! The goal of all life, that one should achieve it is worth endless sacrifice. And is there any better placed to do so than I. You are fond of philosophy Raven, I believe Nietzsche agreed with me."

Raven snorted, "Azar didn't!"

"Azar is but a third of the whole, as is Trigon. Only once I have learned from them all can my goal be achieved."

"For one to lose ones friend top ones father is hard to bear," sighed Raven.

"How do you think it feels to lose ones son?" this was Scott the elder.

The Grandmaster turned his head, "I am not lost, I survived, I have progressed. Listen! Have you heard nothing I have said."

"Your answer proves the justification of my question," said Scott, his voice weary, "Oh Ethan what have you done!"

Raven awkwardly placed her arm around him, "Come," she whispered, "come with me."

They began to walk away, and Raven turned to look back at the Grandmaster, when she spoke her voice had such authority that disobedience was impossible to contemplate, "You will stay here."

Chen turned off the PA and rapped orders into the commlink, "Attack on my word, break the circle and we shall make a fighting retreat to the pickets."

He turned to the Bishop smiled and drew back a clenched fist.

"Attack!"

He swung his fist up, bringing it swinging into the jaw of the priest who was now so close that the Commander could smell his reeking breath.

There was a mighty crack, and the warriors forming the circular wall of the arena swayed slightly, taking a moment to realise what he had done, and another to realise they were under a new attack.

Silver figures were coming in around him, loosing of red blasts into the wall of soldiers. Two Guards folded in before him, forming a human shield.

The robies began to pick up their weapons and return fire, but the Prison Guards were already well on their way to the relative safety of the pickets.

Chen saw a man fall to the pursuing enemies, he hurried to the corpse and seized the weapon from its fingers. At last, a gun! He had felt so helpless unarmed.

The horde on their heels was now chanting out its battle cry, a ululating torrent of noise that chilled the bone. The size of the howl spoke of the size of the force, and suddenly its advance seemed as unstoppable as a tide. Chen blocked out the noise, and the hopelessness that it carried and concentrated on the less than simple task of remaining alive.

He took the risk of glancing over his shoulder at the path along which the Guards were retreating, the edge of the cloud, there it was! Soon he would be safe behind the pickets.

As if to focus his mind on the task in hand a blast from a Temple soldier shot low over his head. Chen blasted in the general direction of its coming and continued to retreat.

Less than a third of the original Prison Guards survived the retreat to the pickets. As the survivors were helped behind a line of riot policemen Chen demanded to see Commissioner Grahamson.

"Well?" asked Grahamson, expression blank behind the thin brown hair and moustache.

Well, thought Chen, well! I'll give you well you bureaucrat!

Raven hurried Scott to a spot sheltered from the ears of the Grandmaster-who-had-been-Ethan.

The empath spent a second ensuring that they would not be overheard psychically and then grasped both of Scott's hands.

"I have never attempted resurrection before, and I hope never to be forced to again, but I-"

"Resurrection," Scott broke in, his face holding a look that approached horror, "You intend to-"

"I intend to return Ethan Scott from the dead. And harm Trigon in the process."

Scott frowned in incomprehension, "But Ethan is not dead, we just spoke with him. I don't quite understa-"

"That was not Ethan Scott." Raven's voice was blank, heavy. No argument was permitted.

The man's eyebrows rose in sudden revelation, "You believe you can bring him back, the friend you knew."

"No, not believe. I hope, I hope against hope. But I am not sure, Ethan is not crushed completely, but I do not trust myself, I cannot tell if I will succeed." Raven's head drooped slightly, and her lips twisted into a grimace of sadness and self-doubt, "or the consequences of my failure."

Scott gave the girl a paternal smile, "Worry not Raven Roth. I trust you. I trust you with the life of the son I never knew. Would you ask more than that?"

Raven returned his smile weakly, "No, I wouldn't." Scott was surprised, if not shocked, to see the tiny diamond globe of a solitary tear welling in the corner of one eye.

The Grandmaster was fairly annoyed, but that was just to cover the shock. Still, annoyance was preferable so he focussed on it to exclusion, blocking out the fact that he had, for the first time in his life, come face to face with his father.

Why could she not see? This had always been his goal. The path to perfection was not one to be trodden wearing the boots of morals. He had forsaken Azar, to be sure, but only once fighting was futile, and yes. It would have been inevitable anyway. Why then? Why could his friend of old not accept that he had improved tenfold, in ability and understanding.

Because you betrayed her, along with everything she adored. You betrayed yourself.

The Grandmaster recoiled, the voice in his mind was his own, twisted with disdain. How familiar that tone had become! For too long he had addressed all around him using it.

No! It was all they deserved, mindless, dogma-clutching cultists! Even his own cultists were standing against him. Standing in his way.

Don't fret, a voice of sneering sarcasm, you can always betray them as well. Just as you betrayed everything you held dear.

Silence!

Peace came to the mind of the Grandmaster, but he was uneasy. Damn Raven for awakening this voice in his head!

Chen removed his helmet, holding it under his arm. He wanted Grahamson to see his face. The fanged smile would help him put across his point of view.

"Well, is that a large force, lets call it, say… a bloody great horde, of deadly, nay, nigh unstoppable enemies is surging towards your men."

Grahamson shrugged, "What do you want me to do, I've authority over riot police movements, nothing more."

Chen could have screamed in frustration, "Godsdamnit, this city, country even, is on the verge of having a torrent of warriors unleashed upon it and you're acting like a petty three year old who wants an ice cream!" he shook the Commissioner by lapels until the pressure built up and he had to turn away and roar at the sky to release it.

Grahamson, who had been thrown off balance by the smaller man's actions, staggered and tottered and then came to his feet.

This was the limit! First the high and mighty Prison Guards amble into his operation and assume control without reference to him as its controller, leaving him with almost enough authority to tie his own shoelace, then they decide they've had enough and demand that he ease their burden. The Titans, condescending and gifted though they were, and even Robin, would have been better.

Speaking of Titans, where in Hell's name were they?

Cyborg came to consciousness to the humming sound of a systems analysis. He had lost one of his legs, just above the knee. Everything else was operational, although his power was severely depleted. Organically he was fine, aching, but fine.

As the man-machine realised but a second later he was tied up.

Tied? Tied with rope? That was an insult. There wasn't a rope in the world he couldn't break free of. He strained against his bonds, putting both living flesh and strong, cold metal to work.

But the ropes failed to break.

Cyborg heard an unpleasantly familiar daemonic laugh.

The sound was horrible, booming like hollow oak. It carried with it dread and despair, draining out the will to fight, emptying its victims even of the will to live.

Cyborg looked up, up into the daemonic maw of the Lord Trigon, which hung open in obscene jest.

The lines of the gaping jaw changed, and in an instant Trigon was no longer bellowing with laughter. Now his scream was one of pain.

Cyborg grinned, thank you Raven.

Raven.

The Grandmaster-who-had-been-Ethan had folded his arms, and looked towards Raven raising an eyebrow sceptically at the drawn blade in her hand.

"I do hope your not intending to use that blade."

"That's not how I plan to kill you," said Raven with a sarcastic grimace that made the Grandmaster wonder whether or not then statement had been genuine.

Raven saw the indecision in his face, excellent.

"Twice I've felt your death Ethan," she said, "do you know how hard that is?"

Azar grant that this works, thought Raven, summoning up bravery from the depths of her mind. Daemonic laughter boomed from the concealing clouds. It was hatred that sent the sword blade flashing across her wrist.

The laughter changed.

"Raven!" screamed Ethan Scott, diving to her side.


	16. The End Part Three

**The End (Part Three)**

"Raven!"

She lay on back, limbs splayed in a posture that could have been comic. Redness, blood, was expanding around her, flowing from her form, which was suddenly frail, delicate. Look at her and try not to feel protective.

"What have you done, what have you done," choked Ethan, continuing until the sobs swallowed his words whole.

"What I had to," Raven's voice contrived to be sweet, though it maintained its usual dry throatiness.

"You cannot die," shouted Ethan, feverishly, attempting to convince himself more than the figure on the ground.

"I must, for Trigon…" her eyes closed.

"Trigon…" Ethan intoned the name with Raven, but his voice held steel.

He turned, and walked into the dust screen, leaving Raven lying.

After a moment the pool of blood ceased to expand.

Greenwood Scott appeared in a haze of darkness, Raven had teleported him directly to her side. Clutched in his arms was some variety of medical kit. He began immediately to apply various salves to the gash in her arm as the empaths innate psychic healing abilities kicked in.

Raven's breath was shallow, and her words quiet, but quite clear, "Do no more, I must remain weak."

Scott frowned, but obeyed, "Did it work?"

"Yes, Ethan has returned, but not for long. He is going to Trigon, to kill him, or at least banish him. He hopes to find at least some redemption in that act."

"What?" shouted Scott, "No! He must not! I must speak with my son, with my true son."

"Then hurry."

Scott stood, taking Raven's sword from her proffering hand, turned to face the dust cloud, paused, and rushed forwards.

Raven breathed out slowly, and let her head lie back on the ground.

For the moment events left her hands. Azar, watch over my friend, act that he might succeed.

There will be no redemption for you…

The thought swept through Ethan's mind like the malignant whisper of a traitor condemning a world to death.

But I must do this, for Raven's sake if not my own, that she should die for despair 's sake is not to be allowed.

She is manipulating you, you know this. She has planned every move you make.

Maybe, but it can hardly be for her own sake. She would kill herself to vanquish Trigon, her selflessness would be wasted if I did not ensure that her work is completed. I must destroy the vile daemonic scum.

You speak of the Lord Trigon! Show respect, for he is our deity.

Yours perhaps, but mine no longer. Ethan's hands began to move, swirling, twisting, accompanying the rhythmic chanting of his voice to bring forth magic of greatness never before wielded by the part of him that was Ethan Scott.

The native will of the sorcery attempted to force through Ethan's defences, to penetrate his mind and subjugate him, but he resisted with a newly renewed zeal. Sternly he removed the sentience from the power he was using, fusing it to his own iron hard will, preparing.

There, ahead! A totem of obsidian, with the four hostages tied to it. The totem itself was carved into the form, of a jet column of smoking flames, with half formed figures tormented in the fires. The smoke rose, curving in upon itself and forming the symbol of Trigon, the great daemonic visage. It was hideous.

Above the totem, towering in infernal and deserved agony, was the daemon. Ruddy skin covered a pockmarked torso bent over itself in pain. Limbs were constricted, pulled in tight, and every great strip of muscle was pulled to the greatest torsion. The face of the daemon was contorted, the mouth was open to emit a howl of anguish that had dried up, and the four eyes were closed and so failed to glow with their customary beguiling golden radiance. Ethan half enjoyed the suffering of Raven's tormentor. It was right, just even, that he should suffer before he died.

Before I kill him.

Ethan offered the departed Azar a final prayer.

Commander Chen of the prison guards was screaming at Commissioner Grahamson.

Commissioner Grahamson was screaming at Chen.

The distance between their faces was minute. It didn't matter that Chen was short and Grahamson rather tall. It didn't even matter what they were saying, each had ceased to listen to the other almost from the outset. And Chen was losing track of his own argument, let alone whether his opponent was interested in refuting it or not. His burning frustration was still dying down only slowly, so the city's second most important security figure continued to shout in the face of the city's most important law enforcement figure.

"Sirs?"

Both men stopped their violent wrangling at once. They realised how close they were and each withdrew in embarrassment. It was one thing screaming at you counterpart, but with someone watching.

"Yes?" both replied simultaneously, and actually took a second to laugh about it.

"The enemy is breaking the edge of the cloud."

Chen looked at Grahamson, "Here's the deal, I'll command my men, and you command yours."

"Done."

They shook hands, and Chen ran to his section, spitting a stream of orders into his commlink.

Barricades had been erected, and the surviving Prison guards manned them. In a second rank behind them were riot policemen, arranged in blocks. They knelt behind their shields, preparing to engage with their batons and firearms if, and when, the enemy came over the barricades and overwhelmed the Prison Guards. Military reinforcements had been pledged, but they would still be hours in arriving and the attackers were not waiting.

Chen took his place in the line, broadcasting a few words of encouragement. Then he gave the order to open fire.

On all sides of the dust cloud he knew that Guards were shooting down carefully selected targets, he lifted his gun, put his visored eye to the sight, and did the same.

Robies fell in swathes, they seemed to have relinquished their own firearms in favour of simply sweeping the enemy away by weight of numbers more than the overwhelming.

In that moment Commander Chen realised that he was not going to survive.

To Hell with it, he thought, consumed by sudden recklessness. The Commander jumped upon the barricades, set his weapon to rapid fire and brought its death-spitting muzzle across the enemy in great reaping waves. He tilted his head back and laughed with the exultant insanity of a man whose quite definitely damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

More men fell, dropping onto their own dead, and being trampled by their own living.

A miracle occurred.

Chen clearly saw a green dinosaur, one of the flying ones, carrying a robot no less, appear out of the dust.

Another apparition materialised in front of him, a boy on a silver rope.

And there was a fourth, a girl, wearing purple and floating in the air.

He gave in.

A cheer arose, as the four Titans swung/flew/were carried to the barricades.

Robin extended a hand to the man standing atop the barricades, "I'm Robin, but you probably know."

Chen took it, "Commander Chen."

As one the Titans charged.

Greenwood Scott ran after the elusive ghost shadow of his son, forgetting to pant in his intentness.

He spotted the shade up ahead and reaffirmed his pace, crying out, "Ethan!" and stretching out a hand as if to grasp him and pull him back.

Ethan heard his name being shouted out behind him, but he had no time. He had so many apologies, and destroying Trigon was his only way of expressing them. The death of the daemon was his final duty, and he would do it no matter the cost.

The magic was ready.

"Trigon!" His voice cut through the air like a knife, slicing short the daemons bellows.

The four eyes looked down to see what the puny mortal at his feet could possibly do to warrant his attention.

A wave of majesty struck the daemon overlord in the face.

There was a tumultuous noise that took a moment to grow. It started merely as violent thunder, booming, but it was not content and it grew and grew, already painful to hear, it became the excruciating sound of the fabric existence exploding. It washed out from the toppled archfiend in waves of clamouring cacophony.

Ethan fell, smashed aside by the fist of the monstrosity.

Scott ran to his side, "My son, my son, my son…" he cradled the dying man's head in his arms, and wept.

Grief passed, for the moment, leaving only deadly purpose.

Scott climbed the knoll that the fallen, but still living, daemon's chest had become. Standing over the creatures black heart.

Once, twice, thrice. Three times the already bloodied blade of Raven's sword plunged deep into daemonic flesh.

"For Azar, for Ethan, and for the Earth," whispered Scott to the dying daemon animal before turning his back and walking off the edge of the mound of red flesh.

He wanted simply to collapse, but a voice called him on.

"Over here, here!"

He wandered towards it aimlessly, and saw the totem, and the four unfortunates tied to it.

A swift slash of the blade cut their bonds and the four captives (he vaguely recognised them) all quit the scene, following their caped leader, leaving a lingering cry of thanks.

Scott staggered to the still, but barely, breathing form of his son, and let himself collapse.

The man took Robin's hand, "Commander Chen of the Prison Guards."

They shook, and Robin turned.

For the first and last time (in this story) he shouted his one catchphrase, "Titans, GO!"

And they went.

Starfire would have called it glorious, and for once she would have been absolutely right. The battle was a rout, Templar Acolyte soldiery was completely sundered by Titans Guards and police, driven back to their fortress and finally purged from its ancient Tamaranian halls. With Trigon once again vanquished all the magics performed in his name came undone, and the gate between Earth and the Temple was irrevocably sealed. The vast, impossible structure of the Temple itself came crashing in upon itself, the storm of masonry rendering the cult that laboured within extinct.

The world, both proverbially and literally, kept on turning.

It was a number of weeks since the recent tumultuous events, and Raven was summoned to her door by the pounding of fists upon it.

"Hey Rae!" No prizes for guessing which green skinned nuisance was at the door.

"What?" Raven deadpanned.

"Do you want to play a game of-"

"No."

"Aw Rae! Why do you never change?"

"Indomitable will," replied Raven, "and a good vocabulary."

She shut the door in his face and proceeded to meditate.

**Author's Farewell: **Final regards to all my readers, I hope when I get to my planned sequel that some of you may return. On a technical note I would appreciate feedback on the temporal shift technique by which one characters story is taken to a point, then the next character comes in at a point prior to where the last was left and proceeds with their story to a point slightly further on, etcetera. Does it work? Does my explanation make sense?

With final thanks,

Regis Santia


End file.
